The Invisible Hand
by Ferrum56
Summary: AU. In 2035, the world teeters on the brink of destruction yet again. This time, there's no Snake to minimize casualties.
1. Generations

**Disclaimer:**

**1) I don't own the _Metal Gear, Boktai, Airforce Delta, Silent Hill, Castlevania, Gradius, Twinbee, Lightning Fighters,_ etc. series. Konami owns them all.**

**2) I make no claim to own my OCs because they're just tools with names.**

**3) Every attempt has been made to emulate the sparse description, long-winded dialogue style of actual militia-, extremist-, and terrorist-produced literature, _but I do not endorse or condone their views_.**

**4) This is the censored, unannotated version to comply with this site's rules. The original is on a private wiki.**

**5) I don't make any money from these writings.**

**A/N (Jan. 20, 2013): This fanfic was started before _Revengeance_ came out. Chapter 13 is my saving throw and where the horror/fantasy starts in earnest.**

* * *

Philanthropy's leaders believed that destroying the Patriot AIs would end the War Economy. They failed to acknowledge basic human opportunism, cruelty, and hatred.

There were those who suffered from the global ceasefire caused by Liquid Ocelot's Guns of the Patriots. Investors saw their fortunes evaporate in an instant, and some lost everything short of their lives. Warmongers, extremists, armchair generals, militarists, and the machismo-obsessed were robbed of their bloody entertainment. Conspiracy theorists, "libertarians," and "patriot" militias thought themselves vindicated at first, but after hearing that the AIs still regulated necessities, they took it upon themselves to rid the world of these last traces of control.

For some vindictive individuals, the wars never ended. They would have their vengeance, no matter the cost. It began slowly: some survivors from the wars gave harsh looks at former mercenaries of the Big Five, which soon escalated to brawls between former rivals wherever veterans congregated, which led to a few former contractors being beheaded in revenge killings. Some former PMCs, in return, gave as good as they got, ripping the eyes out of former survivors who looked at them disrespectfully, beating down on former terrorists wherever they dared to show their faces, and lynching those who murdered their comrades.

That these were supposed to be _former_ enemies never registered to anyone. Few understood or cared for the causes of this animosity, seeing only that acts of violence had been committed against their side and that the blood of those responsible was the only possible remedy.

Within five years, the embers of the War Economy had sparked an era of extremism and low-intensity wars. Within ten, the flames had spread to the five states that comprised the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Within two decades, the inferno had engulfed all seven continents. Not even Antarctica was spared.

In 2035, twenty-one years after the end of the War Economy Era, countless millions of bloodthirsty zeroes had once more turned Earth into a hellhole, and this time, there were no Snakes to save the world.

* * *

His first name, John, was given to him by his mother as a reminder of his father. His surname, Campbell, he had retained as a sign of respect for his stepfather, the man who protected him and his mother from Patriot retribution during his early years.

It was irrelevant in any case; here, he was simply Drebin 2012, an arms dealer who sold to any side that could afford his prices. Granted, he differed from most of his brethren in that he bought weapons and sold only munitions and battlefield luxuries. He wasn't the most profitable green-collar around, but he had the most regular customers out of the thousands of second- and third-generation Drebins out there.

Then again, unlike most Drebins, he never used a Stryker to get around. He didn't have to—the vast majority of his transactions were with domestic customers. They had money and guns to trade for ammo, and he had cases of M193, M196, M855, and M856 cartridges just collecting dust in his warehouse.

An ACU-clad militiaman ran into his tent. "Drebin, you hear?" he breathlessly asked. "We've been attacked! I need a case of 5.56—fast!"

"Sorry, Ralphie," John shrugged. "You're a few minutes too late. Folks before you bought all my Lake Cities and IMIs. All I got left is that old, corrosive Russki junk."

"Shit, it don't matter! Just gimme what you got, bump Charlie, and arrange an RV at the old oak, would you? I gotta get a move on!" Noting the Drebin's inaction, Ralphie demanded, "Well? I ain't got time to fuck with you!"

"All right, all right!" John retrieved a case of vintage steel-cased plinking ammunition and wiped the dust off before handing it over. "One case of lacquered, as ordered. I'll put it on your account."

"Thanks, Drebin! Bye!" Ralphie rushed back to his vehicle and sped off.

John watched as the militant headed toward the smoke plume rising in the distance and chuckled. Once he was sure Ralphie had gotten far enough, he took out a cell phone and dialed a number.

"Yo, Charlie?" he began. "It's Drebin. Don't speak, just listen: There's something strange going down. Ralphie said it was an attack—may be narcs, may be the feds. I'm guessing it's trouble at the lab, 'cause he wants you to RV with him at the old oak. You might want to bring as many of your boys and girls with you as can. Laters!"

He turned the phone off, waited, and grinned. Those people deserved a head start and a final few minutes of freedom, even if they were complete dumbasses.

* * *

Sunny Gurlukovich buried her head in her arms. Despite her education, experience, and motivation, she was utterly unemployable. No one wanted to hire an employee whose actions caused the downfall of major multinational corporations.

If she had known better, she reflected, she wouldn't have exposed those trade secrets. Sure, what her bosses were doing was unethical and illegal, but they paid her bills. Sure, bribing anti-Western terrorists and crooked government officials for assurances of protection was tantamount to treason, but it was how the companies were able to keep profits up and costs down. Sure, whistleblowers were protected from unlawful termination, but they weren't immune if the businesses went under and everyone had to be laid off.

Sunny had a long history of ruining businesses whose practices went against her ethical code. Before turning eight, she had destroyed no less than five corporations. She inadvertently took out a sixth as a teenager, when she exposed a senator's corruption and linked the attacks on his detractors back to goons paid under the table by his security firm. During her college years, a veterans' organization suddenly found its headquarters shelled by barrack busters after calling her Uncle Hal a "terrorist," "traitor," and other assorted insults.

None of those incidents could be traced back to her. Going public about the corruption within the soft drink industry—and its gum arabic sourcing methods in particular—was a different matter. Now she was out of a job, blacklisted by the corporate world, and responsible for causing the company that made NARC Cola to be absorbed by its archrival. Drebin 893 had been particularly displeased of the last consequence, though he simultaneously applauded her for doing the right thing.

To say that the subsequent bounties, hits, termination orders, _fatwas_, and letters of collection put on her head were minor irritants was an understatement. Her enemies had guns and bombs at their disposal, but she possessed things that made armies of Metal Gears seem harmless. Chief among these items was her DREBINS limited-edition scarf, an article of designer clothing with symbols for negative emotions and infinity embroidered on it. It caused her to itch like mad, but it was a small price to pay so she could keep her enemies at bay.

Sunny looked at her beeping wristwatch and groaned. It was time get back to fighting off the worst of these enemies: debt. She'd wiped out her life savings to buy the scarf, and while she couldn't get a job, she could still earn money selling fired cases and empty mil-spec magazines to reloaders and scrap dealers.

All she had to do was put the damned thing on, let it grant her the power of infinite ammo, dump a few hundred mags' worth downrange, sweep up the cases afterwards, and sell the brass to the millions of cheapskates and perfectionists looking to invalidate their warranties. If it were practical, she would have sold cartridges instead, but she wasn't a licensed dealer and had no desire of bringing the boys and girls of F-Troop down on her head again. She'd shot her way across enough borders for two lifetimes.

Dejectedly, she rubbed her bruised right shoulder, stood up, donned her scarf and protection once more, and trudged back to her elephant gun. She dropped to a prone firing position, grabbed the large-caliber rifle, and loaded it with cartridges that seemingly materialized out of thin air. Bracing herself for the pain, she narrowed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

_Fuck! _she mentally cursed through an aching shoulder and ringing ears. _There's gotta be an easier way to make money_.


	2. Unwelcome Visitors

There were a total of thirty-six men, women, and children—an entire Hexad, in militia terminology—living in the trailer park. Patriots to the bone, they had been sent by Galaxy to maintain a cover for the vital operations carried out there in exchange for a place to live.

None were living now.

Ralphie could only gaze in horror at the devastation wrought by an apparent explosion. Not only had the militia lost an entire platoon's worth of people, a major income source, and an outpost, innocent children had been burned to death by agents of the stooges running the federal government. Nothing could justify targeting children, even if the little ones were armed and actively fighting back.

"It's been a long time, Lance Corporal Vandenburgh," came an altered feminine voice from a few meters to his left. "Or is it _Lieutenant_ Vandenburgh now?" asked the same voice, this time from his right. "Frankly, I don't give a fuck. You killed my sisters and got away scot-free. Well, no one escapes _my_ justice, leatherneck. Just ask your friend Charlie."

"Show yourself!" Ralphie demanded.

"How very authoritative! What a man you are!" the voice, now in front of Ralphie, mocked. "Fuck you, Vandenburgh, you inbred mutt. You should've died on the _Missouri_."

"Motherfucker!" Ralphie screamed as he leveled his converted Mini-14 and fired a long burst into the foliage.

The unseen provocateur giggled at him from above. "Is this what passed for marksmanship in the Marine Corps back then? Pathetic, Lieutenant Vandenburgh, absolutely pathetic. That ACU fits you, by the way. With the way you're shooting now, you might just qualify as an REMF—a blind, dumb, drunk _Army_ REMF. Wait, scratch that. I'd be dissing the grunts by comparing them to an ex-Marine like you."

"I'll kill you no matter what it takes, whore!" Ralphie roared at the grave insult as he shifted aim and sprayed the trees with gunfire. No one called him an _ex_-Marine!

One of his rounds sheared off a twig holding an incendiary IED that landed at his feet and detonated, setting him on fire. Screaming, he dropped to the ground and rolled in a vain attempt to extinguish the flames, not realizing he had been hit by an especially potent OILIX-motor oil mixture.

"Ah, the smell of burning flesh!" his tormentor jeered. "You know, your little girl… what was her name? Doesn't matter. She really should've laid off those toaster pastries. All those empty calories. Ever seen that trick where someone turns one into a flame pillar? Now imagine your that being done to your daughter so she won't..." The attacker, unable to hold it in any longer, burst into laughter before abruptly stopping. "Damn! I forgot what I was gonna say next! So just die, will ya?" Her silhouette leveled a P-90 at his head and fired.

* * *

The team sent to the Vandenburgh home had returned with a desktop computer. The accessible files were mundane, downloaded from survivalist sites here and there. More interesting was the virtual hard drive, protected by top-of-the-line encryption downloaded off the Internet.

John sat at his desk, eyes shut and absently cleaning a weathered object. His mind was elsewhere; somehow, the combination of survivalism, computers, and infiltration had brought back memories from his childhood.

The old stealth camouflage used in Philanthropy's early days was far from perfect, weighing seven and a half pounds, being easily disabled, and, of course, leaking EMR. It took years for Sunny and Otacon to improve the design, but in early 2021, they completed a lighter, tougher, and safer prototype that they gave to him.

It was a miracle that they finished when they did, because in the summer of that year, a SWAT team of undetermined origin tried to take Sunny into custody. Apparently, some bureaucrat in some government agency thought that a teenaged girl in the care of a male guardian who was neither a biological relative nor married needed to be rescued before she was abused. Or maybe someone noticed that her biological parents were Russian nationals who had come to the country illegally, making her an anchor baby who was long overdue for deportation.

A young hooligan from New York City named John Campbell was in the unfenced backyard that day, temporarily placed under Emmerich's care while his parents visited the grave of a legendary soldier. He was playing with a modified flashlight, a doll, and his new stealth toy when the SWAT van pulled up. Naturally, he wanted to give the bulls a gangland-style welcome.

The raid went poorly for the SWAT team. The point man still had one foot on the welcome mat when a blast from a Dark Gun slammed him into the door. Other operators were suddenly stripped of their gear and knocked out as bolts of darkness bombarded them from behind. Then the Mantis Doll was used on their unconscious forms to break their necks.

To top it off, neither Sunny Gurlukovich nor Hal Emmerich were there at the time. They lived one house to the west.

John jolted out of his flashback with a yelp as a hand landed on a shoulder. Looking around, he saw the familiar face of another third-generation Drebin. If memory served, this was Keller, one of the team sent down from Michigan as an advisor for counterinsurgency operations.

"Daydreaming, John-boy?" inquired his coworker. "Any luck yet?"

"None, man." John brushed a strand of blond hair from his face. "I tried to break into those restricted files earlier. Thirteen-character password."

"Ouch," Keller remarked. "Sucks to be you. You ask Tomlinson for help yet? She knows people."

John shook his head. "No. I got someone in mind."

Keller blew a raspberry. "So call him already. What's the worst that could happen?"

* * *

"_I know you don't need me to tell you, but try to get some rest before you hurt yourself any more,_" cautioned Otacon.

"I heard you the first time, Uncle Hal." Sunny said. "Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. Have fun in Japan, and remember to bring back Genya's package."

"_Will do. Bye._" The screen went black as Otacon severed the connection.

Sunny placed her hands on her hips and sighed before going back to her desk. She truly wanted to rest, but a visit from Jack's boy had shot that plan to hell. He wanted Uncle Hal to help him crack a two-bit militia's encryption. Problem was, the heads of Otacon-Soul, Inc. happened to be on a business trip somewhere in Nagano Prefecture and wouldn't be back until the end of September.

She had politely declined his initial offer, but he was persistent and kept upping the payout. When he finally threw in a Patriot, she caved and accepted the job. A weapon that never overheated, misfired, nor ran out of ammo was just too tempting for her.

It took all of thirty seconds for her to hack into the militia's encrypted drive. Even the best government agents couldn't have pulled that off, but Sunny could and did. Of course, it helped that using "Jefferson1776" as a password was highly unoriginal. It was the eighth time a misguided group of idiots had chosen the name of their idol to guard their secrets.

Sunny opened a couple of files and frowned. Counterterrorists would have seen little value in them. Regular people would have left and come back with snacks. Copyright freaks would have been howling for blood.

_I wasted time for this? Fuck you, John._

Several terabytes were devoted to pirated media. A common militia tactic was to stock up on information so that after they caused the end of the world, they could deceive the survivors by using it as proof of normality returning. "Reconstruction operations," they called it.

The rest of the contents, which amounted to just over a hundred megabytes, were irrelevant now that the militant group had been wiped out. Still, Sunny copied every bit of data to an external hard drive. There might be intel on Metal Gear derivatives, and there were movies she'd been looking for since 2015.

She sighed. An ex-FROG was running around the country, perforating insurgents arrogant enough to call themselves "patriots." While Sunny thought it was nice she didn't have to get her own hands dirty, she would have appreciated it if the psycho would slow down. Information captured became invalid by the time it reached Campbell because of that one woman death squad.


	3. The Price of Errors

"Thirty-seven people are dead, a meth lab's burning, and I haven't been paid yet," Sunny said as she sat down on the wooden park bench. "Guess which one I care about most, Mister Drebin Man. Really, guess."

John rolled his eyes. "The money?" He laid his briefcase down next to her before taking a seat. "I got your pa—"

The Philanthropist shook her head. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But no. I wanna know just why you people killed three dozen assholes with a pair of flaming toaster pastries." She rubbed between her eyes with her left hand before continuing. "Damn it, John, you remember what we pulled in Mexico. How the _fuck_ was it a good idea to torch a trailer park right before the fall fire season?"

"It was an accident!" the Drebin rationalized. "I didn't think she'd pull something like this!"

"Yeah, well, now the fire departments are scrambling to put it out. Just pray no one else gets killed and no feds get wise. Now, shall we get down to business?"

"Business," John echoed. "Right. As I was saying, I got your money right here. Your Patriot's being held up by paperwork; it'll be yours in a week or so. But really, you should join us. I did the math and, uh… at the rate you're shooting, you're making about thirty, forty bucks an hour. I don't think that'll cover your rent."

"What about with a Patriot?" Sunny asked. She tapped the briefcase between them and winced as pain shot through her right shoulder. "How… how much would I earn then?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It's not as easy to figure out, but I estimate you'll gross somewhere between seven hundred twenty to nine hundred an hour, given nonstop cyclic firing at twelve hundred RPM." Then he paused. Part of him wanted Sunny to imagine the money she'd be earning, but he mainly wanted to allow himself to consider the wisdom of his most recent deal.

An hour of shooting would yield seventy-two thousand casings, which weighed a bit more than nine hundred pounds on average. Scrap yards were willing to pay at least a dollar per pound of brass. Those were his most conservative estimates, and yet they still resulted in a number greater than nine hundred, a dollar figure which often doubled as the floor price.

In truth, 5.56 NATO casings were worth far more than scrap value. A former client of his, one of the more casual shooters of the American gun culture, had been willing to pay fifty dollars per lot of one thousand—between thirty-five and forty dollars in excess of the floor value. He had always seemed disappointed that John was only able to sell four hundred thousand used Lake City casings per week, even though it meant parting with twenty grand of hard-earned drug money whenever the familiar five-ton truck rolled into the designated meeting spot.

It was a shame that the client always handed off the little metal containers to his pals. If he had bothered to do his own reloading, he would have died that day using something better than low-quality imported ammo in his Ruger. There was no chance Ralph Vandenburgh could have survived, but giving him decent ammunition would have prevented his apologists from blaming his demise on shabby equipment.

"You'd make even more if you just scrapped them yourself," he admitted. "You wouldn't have to pay our twenty percent fee then. Either way, after expenses and taxes, you'd be earning… well, a lot more than most people. Definitely more than me. But still, we could use you. I even know an exec or two looking for someone like you."

Sunny opened her mouth to speak, but it took several seconds before she finally muttered, "I'm listening."

* * *

If it weren't for what happened in Tokyo earlier that day, people might have cared. As it was, the combination of a minor earthquake, a total solar eclipse, and overwork was bringing out the crazies in Japan. Early reports were sketchy, but there were reports of a "demon" invasion in Hakuba. A few people were missing, including a major client and a teenaged exchange student. All in all, it was a slow news day.

Lori Tomlinson closed the tab and continued gaming. Taking out the Vandenburghs had been necessary, but with them dead, a major source of revenue was gone. Maybe Campbell wasn't ready for arms dealing in the South, after all.

_Campbell_. The kid had shown so much promise, but he just didn't understand the concept of maximizing profits. Sure, he knew how to make _a_ profit, and a massive one at that, but he was too honorable to squeeze every cent he could out of his clients. In any other line of work, that would have been commendable behavior, but he was a Drebin who sold to scum plotting the downfall of one of the world's superpowers. Failing to drain the coffers of traitors was little different from actively participating in treason. No, John Campbell wouldn't be promoted this year, not when his low-cost "fifty bucks for a thousand" strategy meant he effectively handed eight grand over to antigovernment terrorists each week. He would keep his position as a gesture of goodwill, but only if he managed to convince his friend to join.

Tomlinson's mind flashed back to that fateful day on the _Missouri_, when a lone Marine kept the squad she'd scrapped together at bay long enough for FOXALIVE to be uploaded. Even after two decades, she could still remember the nausea, pain, and despair as their link to the System was suddenly severed.

And then the leatherneck had raised his XM-8 and systematically murdered each of her incapacitated squadmates. He was about to execute her when his rifle experienced a dreaded triple-feed. So he clubbed her with its buttstock several times before his buddies pulled him off.

He had eluded death yet again, Tomlinson bitterly noted, but she still had an advantage: He had to be lucky all the time. She only had to get lucky once.

* * *

"That's just it," Sunny said, opening her car's trunk. She laid down John's briefcase and removed her own. "I don't have a degree in computer science. Just because I'm good at it doesn't mean I like doing it."

"Why's that?" asked John as he reached for the empty container. In his mind, he scratched out yet another career path.

"Try typing out a few thousand lines of code, only for the whole damned program to crash because you forgot a character—_one little character_—somewhere in there. Fuck no, I'm not doing that shit for the rest of my life. I'd rather take a trip to Jalalabad. What choices I got left?"

"If you don't mind the commute, we need chefs at our Washington branch's food court." He saw her raise a brow and continued, "Field sales reps… I don't know. Most of our business comes from ammo sales, an—"

"Hold up," Sunny interrupted. "What do chefs have to do with DREBINS? Hell, why do you people even _have_ a Washington branch?"

"Politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists—our food service people call them the POLLs," John answered. "Very demanding tastes, very rude, and they can make sure you never work in the industry again, but they tip well. Plus, you'll be well protected; it's popular with the feds as well… oh."

"_Now_ you get it," Sunny said. "All those years in school for a master's I can't even make money off of. Fucking feds." She slowly exhaled. "I'm completely screwed, John. I'm up to my fucking eyeballs in debt to lawyers and repair crews."

"Repair crews?" John repeated, raising a brow. Lawyers he could understand; Sunny had fought deportation to Russia several times in the last few years, sometimes violently. But repair crews?

"My old apartment was bombed," she explained. "This neckbeard imam in a little Saudi border town put a _fatwa_ on me for ruining his family's gum arabic holdings in Sudan. So I flew to the KSA and machine-gunned his family, congregation, and whole goddamned village as a courtesy notice. Course, it helped that everyone there was related to him by blood or marriage."

"Wow," he remarked. "And the insurance company thought it _wasn't_ a good idea to pay up after what you pulled? What idiots!"

"Act of God," she snorted, "or some bullshit like that. Yeah, like a few pounds of PETN going off in a slum house is the work of a deity. There's only one asshole god like that, and he was made by GW."

* * *

"Cornmeal, peanut butter, and cooking oil," said Keller. "All of it going bad. Ma'am, are you sure they'll take it?"

"It's either that or starve," Tomlinson answered. "The fuck do we care? Many of them are the reason this country turned into a shithole. The others were too cowardly to die at the hands of assholes as they were supposed to."

"They're still our people, you know," reminded Keller.

Tomlinson shook her head. "Maybe to you they still are, but not to me. Come here. Let me show you something." She opened one of her desk's drawers, removed an ancient memory stick, and plugged it into her laptop. A folder with several hundred pictures popped up, at which point she selected one.

Keller studied the image of a company of familiar-looking FROGs. "Your old unit?" he guessed. "Wow, none of you ladies aged much. You're the Captain in first row, the third from the left?"

"That's right," Tomlinson confirmed. "Take a look at the lieutenant next to me, the one with the customized saber. Notice anything?"

"Aunt Alma? But she always told me she was a cook during the War Economy days."

"That's half true. She was the closest thing to a cook we had." She closed the file. "After we surrendered, we were sent to a prison camp in Arizona. No buildings to protect us from the elements, just a bunch of tents. Hard labor from sunup to sundown. They fed us once a day, and all we got was two slices of moldy bread and a slice of green lunchmeat. Your aunt managed to make that shit edible."

"Yeah, I heard about that. You were sentenced to life." He thought for a moment what that meant. "Fuck, an _Arizonan_ prison camp! They're like modern-day Andersonvilles. I've heard horror stories about them. So how did you get out?"

"We had friends on the outside. They smuggled in a cell phone. A call to the Drebins got us out. You know what happened next."

Keller nodded, remembering the rumors. "You found where the asshole guards and their families lived and killed them all. A few years later, a bunch of you rented a Metal Gear and went to town on the entire state, all so you could waste the governor. And then all of you joined up as first-gens so you could kill even more."

"You see what I got against Arizonans, then." Under her breath, Tomlinson muttered, "Bunch of fucking just-worlders." She gritted her teeth and continued, "Mark my words, Keller: No one escapes me or my wrath. Doesn't matter if it takes twenty years or more; I'll find them and make 'em pay." The ex-FROG glanced at the monitor and frowned. There was an e-mail from Campbell. "Wait one. Looks like Drebin 2012's got news for us."

* * *

"Okay," John announced, "I've scheduled an interview for you with my boss. Don't know what you can do for us, but we can worry about that later. You'd get along with her, I think. Her name's Lori Tomlinson, if you're wondering."

"Tomlinson? Hell, I know her." Sunny saw his surprise, and quickly clarified, "Not personally. She's a moderator of a free MMO game I play at every once in a while." As another spike of pain flared in her shoulder, she added, "She gave me an elephant gun and an itchy-ass infinite ammo scarf for promoting her."

"Oh, _that_ game," John said. "She plays it all the time. I heard it was made by your uncle's company. Aren't you an admin there?"

* * *

"Fuck yeah!" Tomlinson suddenly pumped her fist in the air. "Campbell delivers at last! Sunny Gurlukovich finally scheduled an interview with me."

"That's great news," Keller said. "But didn't you just say—"

"Revenge?" Tomlinson supplied. "Oh, sure. Not all revenge has to be violent. I have something special planned for her."

Philanthropy was responsible for the deaths of Tomlinson's battle-sisters. What delicious payback it would be, then, to have the heiress to Solid Snake's legacy working for her; their innocent little Philanthropist princess who saved the _Missouri_ and could have taken over the world turned into a FROG!


	4. All in the Delivery

A .22 CB cap had killed the father as he changed a flat. Then, the rest of the family was shot down by .950 JDJ rounds. After that, their killer wrecked their vehicle with an M72A7 rocket.

An entire family had been wiped out in an attack on their van, but not even the children would be mourned. No one would dare defend the dead cretins who had gleefully flown the Stars and Bars on the site of the largest massacre of United Nations troops on American soil, who held signs calling for the murder of blue helmeted "agents of the NWO." None wished retribution upon themselves at the hands of a military that had grown a spine almost overnight and paid back with interest every wrong it had ever suffered.

Except the killings _weren't_ the work of vengeful UN troopers. The family had angered many other groups with its stances. To those who knew that the idealized versions of the Antebellum, Victorian, Jim Crow, and Reagan Eras were simply fiction, the idea of returning to those repressive, immoral times was unacceptable. Many were those who wanted to brutally murder the father for his boneheaded views, their wrath stayed only by their respect of the First Amendment and the law in general.

Anger had not been the only reason why the family was killed, though. They sometimes ate at a restaurant and grill that happened to be _very_ popular with students and faculty from the nearby college. The eldest daughter always complained that her iced tea wasn't sweet enough, the rest of the kids were noisy, the mother was obnoxious, and the father never tipped the wait staff. It was only a matter of time before someone complained of their presence. Word filtered down to one of the establishment's former employees, who decided to take action to show her gratitude to her former bosses.

* * *

"Morning, Professor. One used tube, as ordered," Sunny stated with a yawn. "Excuse me," she apologized. It was far too early in the day for business deals, but money didn't come without sacrifice.

With her left hand, she laid her spent LAW launcher on the smooth, rectangular table. Without a rocket, its utility was heavily diminished. At best, she could use it as an ad-hoc ice chest for a few soda cans. At worst, she could sell it for a paltry sum.

She would do neither. Instead, she rolled the tube to the other side of the table. A pair of gloved hands caught the object before it fell off the edge. The container's new owner inspected it, nodded approvingly, and smiled at his former student.

As Sunny sat down, she stuffed the black stocking she was holding in her right hand into a pocket and said, "I don't think those bigots'll be bashing your family again, but if you ever need some wetworks done in this part of the state, don't hesitate to call. Anyway, good luck with your students and give my regards to your son. Oh, and can I get a menu?"

* * *

"Packages from Japan," Keller announced in disbelief as he secured the heavy crates in the idling M54. "Goddamn, man, there's a lot of swords and bling here. These jeweled ones must be worth fifty, sixty mil easy. Who's this Genya guy, a jeweler?" He inserted a magazine into his rifle, chambered a round, and placed it on safe. "We're all set; it's all in there. Ready when you are."

In the cab, Tomlinson loaded and charged her P-90. "Jewel swords, huh? Haven't seen those since Romania. Maybe the buyer's not a complete idiot and knows what she can do with them." She dismissed the implications. "Ah, screw it. We're getting paid to escort this load, not look inside. And since when do we give a fuck, anyhow?" To John, she said, "We're clear, Campbell. Let's get outta here. I wanna be back before those fuckers dump sugar and ice in my tea."

"Yes, ma'am," John replied. The old truck roared off into the rising sun.

* * *

The rest of the ninth of September was, to Sunny, a day off. A self-employed individual like her couldn't afford to rest, but she didn't need to get up to work.

She was lying on her uncle's sofa, wearing her scarf over a dress shirt with its collar upturned. Lazily, she produced item after item and placed them on the floor around her. At twelve 'o clock were empty en-bloc clips for M-1 Garands; next to them were empty stripper clips capable of holding five rounds of .30-06 Springfield. At three was a pile of STANAG magazines that would be the envy of many shooters. At her six was an unorganized library of computer magazines, storage devices, books, and porn.

A treasure trove had been created with minimal effort, yet she still felt exhausted. She had to defend her decision not to get a doctorate degree to her visitor, a task that made wiping out a thoroughly-corrupted Saudi town look easy.

The white-haired lady absently took apart a drum magazine for a Kalashnikov as she argued her final point. "Let's say I put up with that shit and get my degree. I'd still have to grind away so my sorry ass can break even. One of my old professors has to work two other jobs just to pay his rent." She held up a pair of fingers to emphasize her point. "_Two_. And these aren't low-stress, part-time cakewalks I'm talking about, either."

So basically," she summarized, "fuck higher ed. We're not slaves to a bunch of tenured narcissists, required to obey their every whim. That shit's been outta fashion for a hundred seventy years now. Hell, I'm starting to see why intellectuals always get targeted by warmongers and revolutionaries."

"Snake still wouldn't want you to waste your life slacking off," chastised the visitor. "Why are you doing this to yourself, girl?"

"Gee, why don't you take a look around?" Sunny sarcastically shot back. She sat up and jerked a thumb at the materiel behind her. "We beat the Patriots, but we couldn't wean hundreds of millions of Joe Blows out there off of those AIs' influence. Who needs governments or computers spying on every detail of our lives when we're all too willing to voluntarily give up the info ourselves? And for what? With the media so saturated with dumbasses, we'll be lucky to get fifteen _seconds_ of fame." She adjusted her scarf, created a lustrous metal sphere the size of a small cannonball from nothing, and handed it to the visitor. "Put this one at my nine 'o clock, would you?"

"I see your point—hey, is this platinum?" the blond guest asked. "You can make this?"

"If it was ever used as ammo, it's fair game for this scarf. I can also make gold, silver, rhodium, titanium—hell, I can even make it rain durians. Knowing humanity, _everything's_ been used as ammo at some point in time. I can make platinum because people used to use it as shot before they learned it was worth something. Why?"

"You can make platinum from nothing," the visitor stated, "and you still need money. You see something wrong there?"

* * *

"And my father… I hope he's burning in Hell," Tomlinson finally concluded, "so I understand where you're coming from. What was that about your parents again, Campbell?"

"Oh, you know," John nervously said, "my parents live up in New York City. I hadn't seen them in a few months, and they decided to show up at my house at two in the morning."

"Not on good terms, are ya, John-boy?" Keller asked between bites of his breakfast bar. "That why you chose this job?"

"It's not that," John replied. "We get along just fine. I just got sick of all the Patriot Day riots and attacks on the UN. We've already had three cars torched, two stolen. Then there's the blizzards; there was a bad one back in 2010." He added as an afterthought, "Oh, and neither of my parents can cook."

"Uh, Campbell? Hit the brakes, now!" commanded Tomlinson. She instantly regretted the order as the truck loudly screeched to a stop. "Ah, god_damn_!"

In the back, Keller similarly cursed. "Aw, shit! Fuck, man, I nearly bit my tongue off! Give me a heads-up next time, will you?" Then, as his hearing returned, he understood why they had stopped. "Oh, shit."

There was a fortified roadblock a few hundred meters dead ahead, manned by heavily-armed militia "volunteers." A pair of armored personnel carriers from the local Sheriff's Department was closing in from the trio's six o' clock, blocking off any chance of backtracking out of the trap. It looked like the sides were still open, but knowing the LEOs and their deputized lackeys, there was a good chance anti-tank mines had been placed to deter an offroad escape.

"I _knew_ this shit was cursed!" Tomlinson bitterly chuckled. She took off her SMG's safety and engaged her stealth camouflage. The men likewise followed her example. "Well, boys, let's stretch our legs a bit. Dismount!"

* * *

"Like I said, I can't sell it," Sunny reiterated. "I tried pawning a twenty-four carat gold ball for money a few weeks back. Some militia motherfuckers robbed me, and I ended up having to do drive-bys with a rented MM-1 to get my money back. Maybe next time, I'll sell everything to you and save myself some trouble. You up for paying two large for a case of silver bullets?"

"No." The visitor opened the door to the house's vault, walked inside, and switched on the lights. Sunny entered a few seconds later, dragging a laundry basket laden with marbles, ball bearings, and spherical gold nuggets into the room.

"Thank you very much," she said as she let go of the container and rubbed her right shoulder. "Whew! This thing's heavy!"

"Anytime, sunshine." He looked around and saw ammo cans filled to the brim with scrap metal. There were plenty of reasons why there would be so much junk hidden away, but he had his suspicions. "You're making bombs again, aren't you?"

"Who, me?" Sunny feigned shock. "Nah, I'm making bait for some big-ass fish." She tugged on her scarf. "Infinite ammo, remember?"

* * *

The battle had only begun, yet it was already ending. Tomlinson had swiftly assaulted the APCs and massacred the crews. She then commandeered one and drove it to a position where she could light up the roadblock with its mounted M-2 machine gun.

The militiamen manning the checkpoint understandably, though foolishly, broke cover to flee. They were immediately scythed down by .50 Browning fired by an invisible assailant from a range of no more than twenty meters.

Keller, for his part, had maneuvered himself into a position that allowed for enfilading fire on his enemies. He shouldered his rifle and delivered seven .50 Beowulf hollow points to seven different heads in quick succession.

An eighth hostile, undetected thus far, lay prone just off the side of the road. Any attack would cost him his life, but with so many of his brothers down and no other cover available for hundreds of meters, he decided he had nothing to lose. Knowing that a standard magazine for an M-4 modified to use .50 Beowulf carried seven rounds, he knew he had to act immediately, while the attacker was supposedly out of ammo.

His eyes found the ejected casings and deduced the invisible Drebin's position. The more immediate threat, though, was from the Ma Deuce. The second attacker's location was a given; she had to be operating the machine gun.

_Take her out first!_ his mind screamed at him. But weren't there _three_ OpFor to deal with? _What happened to the other tango?_ No matter. He pushed the thought out of his head and raised his SKS…

"Count the seven!" Keller triumphantly howled. He pivoted, saw a prone survivor aiming in Tomlinson's general direction, and shot him in the back with one of his five remaining rounds. "Your turn, John-boy! I got this shithead covered."

"All right! Thanks, man!" John slit his fourth victim's throat with his pen knife and moved over to the wounded hostile. He crouched over the enemy soldier and prepared to plunge the blade into the incapacitated man's skull.

"No, not yet!" Tomlinson shouted from her APC. She jumped off the boxy transport and made her way to the men. Upon reaching them, she removed their downed captive's wallet and took a look. "He has intel. Let me interrogate him first. And keep your Stealth Camo on! There may be additional threats out there!"

"Oh, this is gonna be good," John whispered to Keller as he wiped the blood from his knife. There was a hint of crazed bloodlust in his voice, a dark side of him that emerged only during intense melee combat.

Tomlinson kicked the prisoner in the crotch to get his attention. "Hey, dickface! Listen up!" she commanded. "I'm going to show you a list of names and addresses. _You_ are going to tell me that those people are Reb terrorists, that each one of them has betrayed the generous and benevolent U.S. of A. Then you're going to sign at the bottom with your own blood, you're going to date it, and you're going to give your fingerprints. If not…"

Here she leaned in, "I'm going to kill your family," she threatened. "I'm gonna grill your baby girl alive. Then I'm gonna to cut strips of flesh from her charred body, and I'm gonna to feed her to your wife. And then I'll force your wife to wash it down with drain cleaner. Do you understand? Did you see what happened to those APC crews back there? I've had a _very_ bad morning thanks to you and I haven't had my tea yet, _so_ _don't fuck with me!_"

The prisoner could only nod. Keller, though, felt a wave of nausea crash into him. "Sweet Jesus, ma'am!" he cried. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Who, me?" Tomlinson chuckled. "I'm merely seeing if there are any benefits of applying rational self-interest to military policy. Guess there are."

"Self-interest is overrated," John said. "Infinite retribution…" he paused, gleefully savoring the words, "ah, now _that_ works!"

"Fuck, not you too, John-boy!" Keller barely managed to keep himself from vomiting. "What the fuck is wrong with you people today?"

"Hey, sorry, man!" John apologized, regaining some of his sanity. "You know how much I love the smell of tango blood!"

"Look, boys, we still got a few miles to go," Tomlinson reminded. "Keller, if you're gonna hurl, do it now, while we're not in the truck. Campbell, go get two or three thermite grenades from the glove compartment and use one on that APC back there. Then take the other track, clear the barricade, and blow it up as well. I'll deal with the Reb here."

* * *

Sunny watched as the visitor paced around the front door. "I don't think you came here just to chat, so why _are_ you here?

The guest stopped pacing. "I thought you'd never ask, sunshine. There's news about a Metal Gear popping up out west."

"Spill it already," Sunny said. "You can't have much free time."

"_Moi_? I got nothing on my plate. And this intel's for your friends, too." He unlocked the door. "They should be arriving any second now. In fact, they'll be here in three, two," he opened it, "one."

The deliverymen approaching the door stopped in their tracks for the briefest of moments before the blond one nudged his friend forward. "Go on, Keller! You know what to do," he said.

Keller recovered quickly and stepped forward to deliver the standard lines. "DREBINS Delivery! We have yours!" Then he broke from convention as he recognized the old man and his rings. "Uh, excuse me for a second, sir." The puzzled deliveryman whispered to his comrade, "Hey, John-boy, this the right place? What's 893 doing here?"

"Yeah, it is," John whispered back, "and how should I know? Might be one of those random evaluations, and if it is, what're you doing, man? You're gonna botch it! I told you, it's all in the delivery."

"Hey, I'm Combat Support, not Sales," Keller reminded. "I haven't done this since Basic."

Thankfully, before the situation got more awkward, Sunny came to the door with a big grin on her face. "Oh, you're here! I thought something bad happened to you!"

"Trust me," John mumbled, "you have no idea."


	5. Pest Control

Sheriff Charles Kinney found a threatening message intended for him as he entered the ambush zone his men had set up. It wasn't the body parts of the attackers scattered all over the site, nor was it the smoldering APCs that marked both ends of the area. Neither was it the patriot who had evidently been shot in the back, brutally tortured, and run over several times.

A simple slip of paper, a business card from DREBINS Revenge Services, was far more intimidating than any display of cruelty could ever be. It was the ultimate betrayal: Thousands of patriots relied on DREBINS, and Drebin 2012 in particular, for _all_ of their munitions needs. Two years ago, he had been there for them at the Battle of Armistead, braving intense fire from UN troops where no one else would to deliver a truckload of badly-needed medical supplies and match-grade ammo. Just a few months back, the blond young man celebrated Independence Day with them by personally taking down a nosy ATF agent with his pen knife. Not two weeks ago, his warning allowed the Sheriff's Department to mitigate the fallout from the meth lab raid. For him to have turned—no, to have been in league with the FROG bitch the whole time—was unthinkable, yet here was the proof.

Over sixty men, a force composed of patriots and loyal deputies, had been dispatched to ambush Big Ralphie's killer. At least fifty men died from close-range Ma Deuce fire, their bodies ripped apart by the powerful rounds. Seven or eight men perished from headshots from a weapon chambered for .50 Beowulf, most likely an AR-15 variant. Four were partially decapitated, though not in Drebin 2012's relatively clean style of stabbing into the back of the neck and severing the spine. The charred remains of his deputies were utterly unidentifiable—their APCs had been bombed with thermite grenades.

Kinney picked up a .50 Beowulf casing, inspected it, and clenched it in his fist. Sunglasses covered his eyes, but those who knew him well enough would know he was tearing up as unpleasant memories flooded back.

* * *

"I'll make this short," began Drebin. "You're scheduled to fly out to Arizona next week. That's good. Saves us a bit of trouble. Word has it a militia there is building Metal Gears—Intel guesses they've got a PRINCEPS already completed. Since you'll be in the area, I want you to swing by Camp Zulu to extract our operatives after you drop off your relief supplies." He saw his crowd stare at him as if they'd expected something longer. "That's all. Questions? Comments?"

"That sure doesn't sound like a smart militia," John opined. "I saw a PRINCEPS in action two years ago, and it got cat-killed by a Gekko."

"PRINCEPS?" Sunny echoed. "You people keep using that name. I've heard of IMPERATOR and REGINA before, but never PRINCEPS. What kind of Metal Gear is that?"

"A very, very, _very_ low-budget version of REX," John supplied, "originally designed for a noncombat role. Imagine if someone exchanged the rail gun with an autoloading tank gun, the free electron laser with another machine gun, the Radome with a scaled-up version of what the Gekko have, and simplified everything so even the most illiterate, unskilled workers could build them."

"A single missile up the ass and it'll go sky high," added Keller. "What did you expect? It's a piece of shit held together with duct tape and prayers, a construction mech experiment that never got off the ground for good reason. It's more of a pest than a battlefield threat. You'd have to be a fucking idiot to deploy one in combat."

"Keller!" Tomlinson scolded. "Watch your language! This isn't the office."

"Oh, I don't mind," Sunny said. "I deal with a lot worse whenever I check the forums."

Drebin decided to make his exit, knowing from experience that the situation was only going to get nuttier. "Ahem. I think we're done here. I'll be leaving now. See you soon, sunshine, and remember: Eye. Have. You."

Sunny rolled her eyes at the cheesy slogan. "Speaking of eyes, remember your FaceCamo," she reminded. "They're not kidding with those DWB checkpoints, especially this time of year. Nicely-dressed black man driving something that's not a total piece of junk… don't get yourself caught."

* * *

_Damned cheating kids. Damned commie teachers._ Sheriff Kinney quietly grumbled as he sat in a traffic jam, en route to yet another crime scene. It just had to be near the university, where traffic was always heavy and coffee was never cheap.

Today was a Sunday, but instead of abusing their livers at bars like good young people of the early 2000s, the kids of 2035 chose to abuse their spirits at nano dens—places where young adults used nanomachines in manners which they were not intended. The mainstream media was responsible for exacerbating the plague to its current levels; its coverage of the mass "overdose" incident in 2032 led to the discovery that the new and improved SOP could be used for recreational purposes and academic dishonesty.

He grumbled again at those little facts. Those who couldn't see how allowing someone to feel what others felt, _including extreme pleasure_, could be potentially abused were either blind or stupid. If something was pleasurable, it _would_ be abused by some enterprising soul sooner or later.

While no one was permanently (or even temporarily) harmed in the 2032 incident, Kinney knew that those kids were nothing more than hedonistic degenerates too far gone to be of any further use to the real America. Since the students hadn't violated any laws while in the privacy of their house, Kinney and his deputies marched them outside at gunpoint, where each and every last one _could be_ and _was_ arrested for dozens of trumped up charges, including public indecency.

That evening, tragedy struck. He had gone home after a long day at work, expecting to celebrate his son's eighteenth birthday. The Sheriff had intended to give his boy what he had always wanted: a custom-built AR-15 chambered for .50 Beowulf. What he found instead was his entire family massacred, their hands still clutching the weapons they had used to defend themselves from the burglar. Kinney himself was ambushed by the intruder, shot multiple times by a Five-SeveN, and left for dead. It was only through the intervention of his neighbors that he lived.

Kinney's wounding proved to be a blessing in disguise. An overly idealistic student decided to file a grievance against the Sheriff's Department by killing every LEO he could find and springing his friends from lockup. Six deputies were on duty at the station that night, and all were expert shots. Not one lived long enough to draw against a little punk armed with a single-action .22 revolver.

The killer left his calling card by placing a rotten egg on top of each corpse. Naturally, the sensationalist, ratings-obsessed traitors that comprised the mainstream media lapped up the story, dubbing the scumbag the "Bad Egg" and implicitly approving of his actions by not vehemently calling for his lynching.

The Sheriff's Department tried to retaliate for this slight, of course, but was dissuaded when the funeral procession for the six dead was hit by multiple car bombs that killed over two hundred mourners, many of them women and children. Even after three years, Kinney didn't know who that terrorist was, but he was glad to have been in intensive care during the whole clusterfuck. He certainly would have died in that ambush.

He had never come so close to death except that day on the _Missouri_. God willing, he would never face such close calls ever again in his natural life.

* * *

"More tea?" Sunny offered.

"Yes, please," said Tomlinson. She watched as younger woman refilled her tumbler with more lukewarm drink. "So you're Sunny Gurlukovich, the Violet Sun herself."

"That's me," confirmed Sunny. "And you're the Faithless Frog, wielder of the artificer ban-hammer 'Malice Aforethought.' I saw your alt decap the Hydra Legion last week. Nice job getting Rez to ragequit. Thanks for saving us the trouble."

"I didn't do it for you, Miss Gurlukovich." She paused to take a sip of her beverage. "I fought in the Ugandan Wars of 2019 against both the government and the Konyites. Sixteen years later, I see some punk kid with the same assholish beliefs trolling a good game. He deserved to get blasted."

"I thought you used a machete on him in-game." Then Sunny connected the dots. An ex-FROG who had fought in the Ugandan Wars blasting a troll for spewing the same beliefs—_homophobic_ beliefs in particular—could mean only one thing. "Wait, you _killed_ him? In real life?"

"Nope," denied Tomlinson. "I got someone out in Nevada who owes me favors. She tied the kid up, put a grenade in his mouth, and pulled the pin. Obesity and caffeine abuse epidemics being so commonplace these days, you can see how that caused him to have a heart attack." She paused yet again for another sip. "He'll live, but I'm sure his parents won't let him near a computer ever again."

"Damn," cursed Sunny. "Your girl's screwed up in the head. Why'd she use a practice grenade like that? There's no way she could've taken cover in time if it were real."

"She's a cheapskate." Tomlinson drained the rest of her cup and motioned for yet another refill. "Not that many people know about spoons, and even fewer can tell the difference between an M-69 and an M-67 if they've been painted the same color. The popping sound's a bonus; it's been known to make braver men shit their pants. Like I said, he deserved to get blasted. But the world's not fair; it doesn't work that way."

"Would've been cheaper in the long run to just shoot him," countered Sunny. "Hell, cheaper in the short run, too. A couple of twenty-twos at close range beats replacing a fuze. And we wouldn't have to deal with him in the future. God, I've _killed_ better scum than the little bigot!"

_Better scum?_ Tomlinson's mind echoed. Internet trolls were relatively tame in terms of villainy. _The fuck does that even mean? _She knew Gurlukovich had blood on her hands; the younger woman killed several dozen men and women when she shelled a veterans' organization with an improvised mortar for daring to slander and libel her adoptive uncle. _No,_ dismissed the ex-FROG, _that can't be it. No way in hell she'd be that generous._

Sunny noticed Tomlinson's uneasiness. "Something wrong?" she asked. "Oh, right, not even the CIA and Mossad know half of what I've done. Well, let me tell you a couple of stories…"

* * *

"Hey, John-boy," Keller called, "this remind you of anything?" He held up a blue and silver brooch that seemed to glow with malevolent energy.

"An infinity symbol?" John shrugged. "We call them Duplicators. The plant in Romania makes them."

"And this?" Keller asked. He held up a tricolored object. "Just a Romanian talisman, purely ornamental? And that red sword, just a Romanian katana?"

"What's your point, man?" demanded John.

Keller growled in frustration. "Are you blind? These are fucking WMDs!"

* * *

"You made it look like the son was leaking the information so he could keep himself on drugs," Tomlinson recapped.

"He _was_ leaking info for drugs," corrected Sunny. "I just needed a little smack to get him to loosen up. Lucky for me, I know where to get lots of heroin for free. You see, there's this cemetery filled with mutant poppies from some region of the old Soviet Union I've never heard of."

"That cemetery… you mean the one where Campbell's stepdad's buried?" Tomlinson shook her head. "Those are _corn_ poppies from Tselinoyarsk. Not exactly ideal for extracting opium."

"True," confirmed Sunny, "but you know what white poppies stand for. You simply buy some pure horse from a dealer who owes you his life and hand it over to the vic as a free gift with the purchase of a few bouquets of some insanely-expensive flowers. Victim's father comes home from D.C., sees the charge on his card a few days later, goes batshit and kills his son with a fire poker. The law gets called in: The IRS somehow finds discrepancies in the senator's financial statements that it missed for the last decade, the DEA finds a massive stash of heroin not even _it_ knew it was tracking, ATF jackasses find enough ammo and explosives to supply a global terrorist network for years, and his wife finds a note from his mistress. According to the senator, all of the evidence was fabricated, and guess what? He was right. But he was also one of those security freaks who tried to turn this country into a police state, and _that_ was why his life deserved to be ruined."

"His wife's not the government," reminded Tomlinson. "But this mistress you mentioned… was that…"

"Me?" Sunny burst into laughter. "No, I'm not like that, but back in high school, I knew a few ladies into some freaky shit. They helped out with the note. And besides, I wasn't his type; he liked his women… shall we say, black?"

_Interesting_, thought Tomlinson. So many of her preconceptions about the younger woman had been shattered. The ex-FROG had expected to find someone who abhorred killing, but found herself facing a butcher even more sadistic than the psychopaths of the B&B Corps of old. She thought the Philanthropist a meek little girl, only to find that Sunny's _good_ side bragged of putting the smack down even when she didn't need to. This was not a girl, but a demon born of the sins of the world's superpowers.

And she hated the ultra-sweet iced tea so many locals seemed to love. In short, she was exactly kind of person Tomlinson wanted, and here was a perfect opportunity to recruit. "You know," the ex-FROG said, "we'd love to have you at DREBINS. Campbell—excuse me, John—told me you don't know what you could do for us if you were hired, so I'm here to correct that. So tell me, what did you major in?"

"Culinary arts," Sunny answered. "Yeah, it ain't as glamorous as it sounds." She paused to remember her days on the _Nomad_. "True story: I used to fry eggs as a kid as a kind of fortune telling. If they came out right, it was a sign that Snake's mission would be a success. If they didn't, it wouldn't go well. But then I learned how to cook from one of Snake's old friends, and I eventually realized that success is based on more than luck. The vast majority of it involves learning from mistakes, both your own and other people's, and controlling as many variables as you can."

Tomlinson's mind screamed at her. _Controlling variables… learning from mistakes… no remorse… those are good operator qualities! Hire her already!_ But she resisted. "I understand you whacked six deputies with a single-action revolver back in '32. Who taught you to shoot like that? Snake?"

Sunny shook her head. "No, not Snake: He hated revolvers; pistols were more his game." She gestured at the house. "When my uncle bought this place, it… well, to put it lightly, it was a fucking dump. Rats and spiders everywhere, toxic mold so thick, it had turned a few walls into mush, a portal to Hell in the basement… oy! We were lucky we got the CDC to come in and burn this place to the ground for cheap back in 2020."

"That doesn't answer my question," said Tomlinson.

"Oh, but it does. If you've ever had to break open a rats' nest, you'll know why." The white-haired woman used her scarf to spawn a mousetrap. "You see this? It's absolutely worthless against rats. You'll kill one or two, that's for sure, but when you're dealing with thousands, there's no way to set enough of these. They just keep coming, and if you let it get out of hand, you'll wake up one morning with a big one on your chest, staring right back at you. Around that time's when you freak out, load up the deuce-deuce, and start busting caps at anything that moves."

* * *

John sighed. "Keller, you're not making sense. What do you mean, Mossad's going to kill us?"

"Do you remember the freak 'accident' a few months back, when the holdouts in a settlement that was being dismantled mysteriously died like their souls had been sucked out of them?" Keller reached into a leather pouch and pulled out a coin. "One of these coins caused that."

"Really?" John placed his hands on his hips. "You're telling me these are magical coins that can do a lot of damage in the wrong hands. Yeah, right. I can believe Mossad is full of superstitious nutjobs, but magic? Please."

"Fuck, this is gonna take a while," Keller mumbled. He inhaled and braced himself for a long explanation. "You're giving that girl a Patriot soon, right? A Patriot never needs reloading because of its mag. The Boss used one in the 1960s, and when she was killed, Big Boss left it at her grave. Someone came along, picked it up, and handed it over to the defense industries. America spent decades to reverse-engineer it, and the best Colt could come up with was the M-231, which weighs over twice as much and has a fuckload more recoil. The Beta Company did what they could with the mag, but even Leroy 'Jim' Sullivan's C-mag was limited to a hundred rounds."

"Yeah, I've heard this story a hundred times," John said. "In the end, it took the old Costa Rican blueprints to dupe it. Patriots are just advanced tech, man, not magic."

_This is impossible!_ Keller raged._ Okay, calm down and let's try this again_._ He can't be that dense._ "There are bandanas, wigs, scarves, and face paint that give us infinite ammo, let us hold our breath forever, keep us from losing our grip, and so on. We can wear fatigues that keep our batteries from draining. Those FP-42 copies somehow make us a lot harder to see, and we can feel better just by holding one. Hell, we can make invisible backpacks with infinite storage space. None of that sounds like magic to you?"

John shook his head. "Even if it is, I'm still not convinced. Man, you know who my dad is. You know he got decapped, which normally kills people. He's still alive, and if he doesn't do anything stupid, he'll probably live for another hundred years at the very least. Again, that's not magic, just sufficiently advanced tech."

"_Charlie_ is still alive," Keller tried at last, "and he doesn't have a single piece of metal in him anymore. Guy pissed off Tomlinson years ago and hasn't been killed yet. If that's not magic, nothing is."

"He has a shield—" John began, before remembering the _replica_ shield unit he'd sold the inhumanly lucky militiaman on Independence Day. "Well, I guess you're right; magic does exist."

* * *

"Charlie" wasn't going to live much longer. Soon, the already-depleted ranks of the local Sheriff's Department would suffer yet another loss. If the pattern continued, Virginia would retain its status as the most dangerous state for crooked law enforcement officers for the third consecutive year.

Sheriff Kinney stood at the wrecked van, inspecting the damage like an idiot. Bodies lay everywhere, all but one killed by large-caliber rounds. A retired Marine like him should have known that the presence of a large number of corpses apparently killed by a single weapon was a bad omen, yet he stood far from cover.

"Three hundred, wreck, one enemy at the front," the ghillie-clad spotter told his partner. "It's him."

"You sure?" asked the shooter. "I thought he'd be fatter."

"Camera adds ten pounds," gruffed the spotter. "Look, let's just kill him so we can go home already."

"If you say so, Al," the shooter answered. "But what if the intel's bad?"

"She wouldn't lie to us, to me." The spotter grabbed his own rifle and pulled the charging handle back. "And even if it is, we still get to kill a bull." He let it fly forward, chambering the cartridge he'd prepared for this special moment. "Countdown's from five this time. You know when to fire."


	6. Lured by Power

"One second," Tomlinson requested, wincing as the annoying ringtone sounded for a second time. "Sorry, Sunny, but I gotta take this." She rushed out, nearly bumping into John as he entered with the second-to-last box of swords.

"Where do you want this one?" John asked as he wheeled his hand truck into the house. Behind him, Keller dragged in a heavy sack of jewelry. "Your rec room's a mess with all those mags lying around, and I'm pretty sure your vault's full."

"Let me see," Sunny mumbled. A quick glance at the identification code on the wooden crate later, she bit her lip and said, "Niner-foxtrot-niner… well, shit. Uh… just leave them here. We don't need these fire swords going off by accident."

"Fire swords?" the men nervously echoed at the same time. Neither of them liked the sound of that.

Sunny corrected herself. "Technically, they're Fire_brands_. Instant third-degree burns to flesh, capable of performing charged attacks, and worth somewhere around a hundred twenty-something large on the black market. They _do_ come with safety measures, but hell if I know what they are." She suddenly flinched as pain shot through her shoulder.

"You okay there, Sunny?" Keller asked.

"Yeah," she hissed, "I'm fine. Just gimme a sec."

"It's from that elephant gun of hers," explained John. "She's using one of Tomlinson's old ones to raise money for herself."

"Damn!" remarked Keller. "I've seen the recoil from a .577 T-Rex knock grown men back several feet. You must be pretty good if you're using a .950 JDJ with just a hurt shoulder."

"Nah, I'm not good. I just don't suck," Sunny said. "I'd just pull the bullets out, but then the guys I sell them to would notice the unfired primers. Can't sell the cartridges intact, either, or the ATF'll raid me on bullshit 'selling destructive devices' charges and I'll have to go crazy and kill everyone who fucks with me again. You see why I need that Patriot now?"

* * *

"So you fucked up, is what you're saying?" Tomlinson groaned as she heard the knee-jerk rationalization. "Fine, you didn't. Salvage what you can and exfil. We'll have another chance later on. Bye."

Charlie was still alive. Somehow, the lawman and militia ally had cheated death once again. The sniper team assigned to kill him had missed a stationary human-sized target at three hundred meters a total of four hundred times. It was nothing short of a dark miracle that a pair of trained shooters with nearly a dozen confirmed kills each failed to kill one retired Marine.

_Maybe Celia could help_, she thought, dialing the fixer's number. _Goddamn, how low I've fallen!_

_

* * *

_"Wait," whispered Keller as he followed the others into the basement, "you were being serious? This place has a vault? An actual vault?"

"The entire basement was originally a bunker," said John. "DREBINS Construction built it back in 2020 after the original house was demoed. Doc Emmerich never had to use it, even during that SWAT raid, so he turned it into a place to put all his old stuff."

"And the vault was put in to hide all the illegal shit we have," finished Sunny. "NFA might be a thing of the past, but the antis just _love_ to destroy lives. Fuck those cowards."

The octagonal room they were currently in contained nothing of value. Several empty laundry baskets were stacked to the trio's immediate right. Hard copies of documents pertaining to Otacon-Soul's business activities sat in a dented file cabinet in a far corner. Tarps covered ancient computers and game consoles scattered around the concrete room's perimeter, protecting the obsolete machines from dust. Olive drab ammo cans covered one wall, hiding a vault door.

"Huh, a PS3," Keller noted. "Haven't seen one of those since I left home. Jailbroken?"

"Do you even have to ask? You know Sunny's rep." John walked to the ammo cans and removed one. "Okay, we're done here. Let's go back."

"John-boy, what are you doing?" asked Keller. He turned to Sunny. "Aren't we going in?"

"That's a decoy," said Sunny. "The real vault's back upstairs, but you can only access it if the weight of the boxes here is below a certain amount." She knew what Keller would ask next, so she added, "There's a pressure plate right under them."

Keller mentally reviewed the steps needed to get to the real vault. "Seems like a lot of work just to open a door."

"Exactly." John's grip on the metal box tightened. "It's never easy with special ops types or conspiracy theorists."

* * *

"Celia, listen to me, okay? I have to bust my ass twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I don't have time to join a cult."

Those were lies, of course. Tomlinson was hardly the most diligent employee out of combat, never spending more than ten of those twelve hours working. With employee empowerment being so prevalent these days, there was little she couldn't delegate to ambitious underlings.

In addition, her career as a Drebin had capped ever since her superiors promoted her out of the Combat Support branch; she was sticking around because her current position offered plenty of fringe benefits that would otherwise be inaccessible. Her office was warm in the winter and cool in the summer, unlike her home. Numerous business and political contacts that were all too willing to rush to her aid only did so because of promises of reciprocal aid. If she joined a cult, she would have to resign out of fear of tarnishing her company's image.

Besides, she had just convinced Sunny Gurlukovich to become a FROG. No way was Tomlinson foolish enough to fall for the same trick herself.

"_Fine_," the woman on the other side answered, "_but I still want a discount on the Conluz project. Say… thirty percent?_"

Celia had worked for DREBINS in past as an independent debt collector and was currently one of the company's biggest clients, having recently come into money. In exchange for her help in abducting Charlie sometime in the near future, she wanted a discount on her construction project in Spain. It was a steep price, but one that still left both parties better off than before.

"Fifteen," Tomlinson counteroffered. Thirty percent off on a fortress-themed hotel was acceptable, but it was still too early in the game to accept. Taking it would have been a sign of weakness.

"_Twenty-five_," said Celia.

"Twenty." Tomlinson nonchalantly looked at the fingers of her left hand and noticed a chipped nail. Celia was simply too easy to read. This negotiation would be over soon enough.

There was a brief pause. "_Twenty and a fully customized Dark Gun_," came the other woman's response. A male voice interrupted, and for a few seconds, Tomlinson could hear the other party arguing. At last, Celia returned with one more demand. "_And a bomber jacket: Italian fleece with a black outer shell, red flames on the sleeves, and fur lining for the collar and insides of the sleeves. Size is irrelevant, but my… partner wants it fireproofed._"

_So predictable_, Tomlinson thought to herself. "You got a deal. I'll send you the revised contract by midnight tomorrow." With that, she ended the call, turned the phone off, and shook her head. "Another sucker ripped off."

* * *

"This is it," said Sunny, gesturing at the darkened room in front of them. She switched on the lights and frowned as they malfunctioned. "Motherfucker! We replaced them just last month!" She exhaled, regaining her cool. "Well, welcome to Philanthropy's vault. 'Excuse the mess' and all the other clichés you can think of. Yeah, it's almost full, but we can probably shove a few boxes in here. All this junk remind you of something?"

"I wanna say a bomb factory," guessed Keller, "but I don't see any explosives. Hell, I can't see much of anything except… brass? _Is_ that brass? There must be a lot of primo scrap and empty cases here… is this your reloading room?"

"No, this is where I store all the bait for my traps." Sunny indicated a white tome on top of a metal box. "I haven't needed to reload ever since I got my scarf, but that book there's filled with all the data I've collected so far from my range buddies. You wanna go get it, John? Your dad's been asking for it since last year, and I don't think I can lift it."

"Why not?" John stepped into the room, cautiously tiptoeing around the clutter. Inevitably, his foot banged against a laundry basket. A golden marble rolled out of the plastic container and came to a rest at Sunny's feet. "Ow! I don't remember all this stuff being here. What are—" the rest of his question was cut off as he slipped on something and fell.

"Sorry about that." Sunny bent down and retrieved the marble. "I tried moving them farther in, but solid gold's not light."

"Solid gold?" repeated Keller. "You mean they aren't just gold-plated?"

"If you don't believe me, you're free to take some with you," Sunny replied, handing Keller the ball of precious metal. "Really, go ahead. I can make more."

"Don't mind if I do," said Keller. "Hey, John-boy! Mind rolling out any that get in your way?" About a dozen objects slid to the threshold. "Thanks, man!" He began stuffing his pockets with spheres and cylinders of precious metal. "So… how come you still have money problems?"

"I have to go through this routine again?" Sunny put her hands on her hips. "Before you three got here, I had to explain this to Drebin 893. Do I have to waste another hour?"

"No, you don't." John rubbed his foot. "I'll tell you everything when we get back. Long story short, Philanthropy knows the crazies trust gold more than hard currency."

"Some of them even want to return to the gold standard," Sunny continued, "so they're buying like crazy right now. Gold's cheap, but prices have been going up for the last year or so. I can send a few ounces to a militia contact and walk away with a few grand in paper. It's not much, but I got legal fees to deal with, so I'll take any help I can get." The memory of the robbery attempt flashed before her eyes. "At least, I used to be able to do that. I had to kill my old buyer after he set me up. Like John said, it's a long story."

"But I thought the militias were your enemy," countered Keller.

"So?" Sunny dismissed. "Snake taught me that if you're buying bling, you'd fucking better have your necessities fully covered. These fools _don't_, and while they're converting all their dollars into metal, I'm making sure I have all their paper. When the crash comes—and it will—they'll be a lot poorer than when they went in. _I'll_ have most of my debt paid off. Sure, a lot of innocent people are gonna get hurt in the process, but no one ever said life was fair."

"You got that right!" John piped in. Something heavy within the vault crashed to the floor. "I keep getting roped into the worst messes around thanks to you people, and I don't even get paid for overtime!" More objects fell. "Oh, and Sunny? One of your baskets blew up. There's silver and platinum everywhere."

"Not again!" Sunny groaned. "Fuck it. Just leave the crates in the living room."

* * *

"Looks like they weren't bullshitting me for once," a grizzled old militiaman pointed out, laughing to himself. The paramilitary veteran was sitting on a low tree stump and resting his feet on a pair of filled body bags. "You're still alive. You must be one lucky bastard."

"No thanks to you!" Kinney screamed at the soldier. "I called for backup, and it took two _hours_ for you to get here! What part of 'ASAP' don't you understand?"

"Now, now, Sheriff, is that any way to talk to the man who saved you? Wah fucking wah, just like a big baby," mocked the anti-government soldier. "If I had my way, I'd give you the boot right here, right now. You can't even take care of yourself."

Kinney gritted his teeth. "Are you calling me irresponsible?"

"I am. All you had to do was keep the commies and fascists off our backs, and you let the Bad Egg slip through your fingers. The meth lab—the one you lost—was a major cash cow to Bravo Cluster. Hundreds of our elites, our very best, are dead because of you." The trooper angrily spat at Kinney's feet. "Many more of us regular grunts got deputized and killed. Do you even remember them? I'm not asking for every single name, only a ballpark number. You can't remember, can you? Well, I'll give you a hint: It's a four-digit number, and the first ain't a one."

"Now you listen—"

"No, Charlie. This time, _you_ listen. We threw our support behind you, and you repaid us by losing an entire county. You said you had to wait two hours before I got here. That means you had two hours to hunt down and destroy two wannabe-snipers who killed an entire family, but you let them get away. Goddamn you, you let a pair of child-killers live. I don't give a flying fuck about your safety; the lives of kids come first, and if they get hurt or killed, you're supposed to stop at nothing to make things right, not hide behind a pile of charred metal. 'To serve and protect,' all you bulls say, but you're not fit to guard a porta-shitter, Charlie. You're no American. You're nothing but a selfish jackboot we let in by mistake."

"I see," Kinney said with an aura of deadly calm about him. "Thank you for your opinion. I see my mistakes and will correct them starting now." He drew his Glock 21 and pointed it at the militiaman. "Hands on your head. You're under arrest."

"What?" cried the doomed soldier. "Charlie, what are you—"

Kinney double-tapped the betrayed man in the head. Memories of his family's massacre flashed before his eyes. He fired again, remembering the buckshot-riddled walls and ceilings where his wife and their son had fought against a vengeful intruder. _I would've given my life to protect them, and you call me a coward!_

The Glock flashed twice more as the familiar scent of blood and gunpowder wafted to his nose. Six more bullets erupted from the pistol for two sets of the "two in the body, one in the head" style that had been popular with the six deputies slain by the Bad Egg. _We have to make life-or-death decisions, and the public second-guesses every last one. We keep you safe, and you thank us by glamorizing cop-killers._

Another round was discharged, this one piercing one of the militiaman's lungs. _You set up a drug lab in my county. I lost friends there I'd known since Parris Island. Did you ever think of that?_

One last bullet flew through the air and lanced through the soldier's heart. _I'm no American? Neither are you._

Kinney glanced at his Glock and saw that the slide was locked back. "Oh, did I say 'under arrest'? Oops." He swapped out the magazine and released the slide before glaring contemptuously at the corpse, dimly realizing he'd have to cover up yet another mess. "My mistake."


	7. Rotten Deals, Dirty Money

Tomlinson watched as Sunny picked up a sack of gold and handed it to John, who tossed it to Keller. The white-haired woman didn't think of it as tipping the Drebins; she was merely cleaning her vault of clutter to make room for her sword collection. Thankfully for the Philanthropist, Keller had taken an interest in the collection of junk metal and offered to pay all of her debts in exchange for a few tons of gold and silver.

"We'll be back Tuesday evening," stated Keller. "Traffic's gonna be a bitch, but nothing we can do there." His hand patted a bag of lightning links and drop in auto sears. "You sure you wanna get rid of these, too? They used to be worth ten grand each."

"They're worthless _now_," answered Sunny. "Fucking politicians just had to get rid of the National Firearms Act after what happened two years ago. I could sell them for scrap, but I might be talking to an undercover cop or a nosy bastard. So yeah, go ahead and take them."

"Hell of a gift you're giving us," said Tomlinson. The ex-FROG carried only an index card bearing a short string of nonsensical letters and numbers following a question mark, yet the information written on the piece of paper was worth more to her than any amount of legal currency. "Thanks again for this code."

"No problem," said Sunny. "My uncle's not due back until the end of the month, and I never realized how much work he does. And Yoko's in the hospital right now; she got stabbed by a scumbag last week."

"Ouch," winced Tomlinson. "Nothing serious, I hope."

The younger woman shrugged. "Meh, she wasn't hurt that bad; she met with my uncle before she got patched up. But then the wound got infected, and she's not taking any more chances." She lifted a smaller sack with her left hand and turned to Keller. "Hey, Keller! I got some Garand clips here. Would you make sure they get to Maria while you're in Arizona? Drebin 893 told me she's there on an unrelated job, and I still owe her."

If they were in a virtual environment, an exclamation mark would have flashed over John's head. "Maria? You mean Maria _Cruz_ from Oregon?" The color drained from his face. "Not her again!"

"You said it," groaned Tomlinson. "She just won't shut up about her son. You'd think one of Outer Haven's best snipers would know better."

* * *

"In this world, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Things that don't exist can still go wrong."

"Tell me about it," Kinney said, taking a bite of his burger. "Had to kill one of my own after he tried to have me PNGed." He swallowed his mouthful and grimaced. "Ugh! Must be a newbie on duty. I can still taste the charcoal."

"Yes, I suppose it must be difficult to be punished for crimes that never happened," agreed the lawman's friend. "I find it interesting how you can still eat after nearly being killed."

"Helps me relax," the sheriff reasoned. "Got some good news for you, too, Professor," he added. "You know that family? The nutjobs always causing problems a block from the Armistead Massacre site? They got themselves killed."

"Really?" asked the professor. "All of them? You must've had a hard day, then. All that heavy lifting… and having to bag the kids as well."

"Fuck the kids," Kinney replied. "They knew what they were getting into. Sure, they hated the UN, but Royal Marines died that day, too. You fuck with a Marine of one country, you fuck with the Corps of every friendly country." His voice dropped to a whisper. "So, who'd you hire? Come on, tell me. I ain't gonna arrest you or nothin'. I might even hire him."

"You won't hire him," the educator chuckled, "because I didn't place the hit." Noting Kinney's disbelief, he added, "There seems to be another player in this game… the Bad Egg, perhaps?" He bit into his mashed potatoes and chewed. "You're right on one count, though. It definitely must be a new hand in the kitchen."

"I miss the old chef," Kinney said. "Best cheeseburgers in all of Virginia back then. If only they would've deep-fried them like they do back in the old country."

"Ah, yes, you're thinking of Sunny Gurlukovich. A number of my colleagues persuaded Doctor Nguyen, the owner of this establishment, to do his best to keep her here. Unfortunately, Miss Gurlukovich quit to pursue a career in the soft drink industry. She's unemployed now because of the gum arabic scandal."

"Poor girl." The lawman drained yet another can of soda and placed it next to the empties. "I know her family. Fought alongside Snake and Doc Emmerich on the _Missouri_. True patriots, those three, but when you do the right thing, the world just has to fuck you over." An idea suddenly dawned on him. "Say, you still got her contact information?"

* * *

"Until you're fully trained, you'll be working as a casual at our weapons testing range," said Tomlinson. "Your job will be to dispose of cases fired by Patriots. It sounds a lot worse than it is, but you'll want to bring some heavy-duty ear protection of your own. The stuff we give out sucks."

"Watch out for Patriot Six," John warned. "The manufacturers goofed on that one."

"They really did," agreed Tomlinson. "It misfires once every three, four hundred thousand rounds. That kind of defect rate's good enough for the aircraft industry, but you really don't want to have to call Maintenance to fix a subgun every four hours."

"Patriot Six. Got it," said Sunny. "Just so we're clear, when you said I start next Monday, you meant the… seventeenth?"

"Correct," confirmed Tomlinson, nodding. "You're _officially_ assigned to Tour Three, the shift from noon to… whenever. We operate on flextime; that schedule's a guideline at best. Your pay schedule's fucked up, too. You might be paid once a day, or it might take up to a month before you get your paycheck; it all depends on how fast our clients pay us. And… damn it, I forgot what else I was supposed to say!"

"Break policy, ma'am," John supplied.

"Break policy," Tomlinson repeated. "Right. You're allowed to take off at just about any time, but you have to sign out first. Always, always, _always_ remember to sign out if you leave the range area. We want to keep track of who went in or out in case something—or someone—goes missing."

"DREBINS is pretty easygoing when it comes to discipline," explained John, anticipating what Sunny was about to say.

"Yeah," Tomlinson hesitantly agreed, "as long as you're not in one of the divisions where you absolutely have to do things a certain way. Sales is about as easygoing it gets." She nodded in Keller's direction. "Combat Support and R&D are a hell lot stricter, and God help you if you want to be an exec someday."

"That's a given," Keller snorted. "You fuck up in Combat Support, you'll be lucky if the worst that happens is no one ever trusts you again. Obviously, that doesn't apply in your case."

"True," Tomlinson admitted. "Since your job can be done by any fool who can lift a shovel, there ain't much in terms of rules. Bad news is, the pay sucks; like I said, you get paid on a fucked up schedule. You earn minimum wage just for showing up, but you have to exceed a quota if you want a bonus, and you won't know how much you've truly earned until you get your paycheck."

"Not a problem," said Sunny. "I'll take anything I can get. You mentioned something about FROG training earlier. Why me? I mean, I know you people train elites from the UK's SAS to SWAT teams around the world, but isn't that a hostage rescue program? I think it's way outta my league."

_Oh, fuck._ Tomlinson felt goosebumps forming on her skin as she realized her mistake. She had been so focused with getting Gurlukovich to join up that she never asked for the younger woman's qualifications. It was highly likely that Sunny lacked the gymnastic capabilities needed to even be considered a candidate for a FROG. With the Philanthropist's injured shoulder, that likelihood became almost a certainty.

Luckily, John stepped in. "FROG school's supposed to be packed until next year, isn't it? We're training those HRT teams this time, and the Japanese have dibs on the next two classes."

"The Japanese?" Sunny asked. "What happened this time?"

"An American missionary got himself killed on Japanese soil," said John. "Word is, he got into a little argument with a Spanish exchange student and got stabbed at least a hundred times."

"Oh, yeah, the Hakuba incident," said Sunny. "My uncle e-mailed me about it a few days ago. Wish I could buy that kid a cream soda or a beer or something. Man, that solar eclipse really brought out the loonies." She suddenly realized how late it was and quickly tried to usher her newfound friends away. "Well, guess I'll see you later. Drive safely."

* * *

"I'm sorry, Sunny, but I don't know many of the FROGs by name. We fought against each other." Instantly, Otacon regretted his words. The young _man_ wore a black turtleneck, blue jeans, and a light gray trench coat. The boy's hair was a little too white, his ears were pierced, and his fingers carried rings, but other than that, he reminded Otacon of Sunny.

The darkness wasn't helping matters. Because of scheduling conflicts, the meeting had to take place in the wee hours of the morning. Genya had been unable to attend, sending his representative in his stead. This kid spoke fluent American English, which wasn't surprising once it came to light that he was a native-born citizen of the United States who'd come to Japan as part of a study abroad program.

Thankfully for Otacon, the boy didn't seem to notice the gaffe. "That's okay. Do you know Lori Tomlinson, though?"

"Tomlinson…" Otacon rubbed his chin thoughtfully, scratching his hand on the stubble. "Oh, I remember! She's one of our game's mods. Why?"

"I'm trying to get in touch with her," the teen said. "One of my friends is retiring from the military and wants to get into arms dealing. My mom told me to call Ms. Tomlinson if I ever wanted a job in selling guns." His lip twitched. "After what I went through last week, I think my friend's crazy, but to each his own."

"Sun—" Otacon began. He stopped himself before he finished the name. A couple of heartbeats later, he continued, "Did Genya put you up to this?"

"Uh… not exactly. He only asked me to give you this." The young man produced a folded sheet of paper from a pocket and handed it to the scientist.

"Hmm, let me see…" Otacon tapped the bridge of his nose out of habit as he unfolded the stationery. "A requisition form?" he mumbled as he began reading. "Okay, send twice of that and none of those. I can do that." He moved his finger to the next item. "We've been trying to get rid of those for a while. Only one? No problem." He scanned the rest, stopping at the signature line. "Sign here—shoot, where's my pen?"

* * *

"Mom? Dad? It's John. Listen, I think I won't be home 'til nine tonight. Stuff at work. We'll have to catch up some other time. Bye."

John blinked repeatedly after turning off his cell phone. He had to prepare for a trip to Arizona, which meant requisitioning ammo from his warehouse. It was late Sunday afternoon, when no one was available to handle small orders of less than a case. As he rarely used 5.56 NATO, preferring to sell it instead, most of his stockpiled munitions were still sealed in their cans and crates, the containers further protected by cloth tarps. A layer of dust had covered the tarps, a fact John learned only after pulling one off without wearing eye protection. A long visit to an eyewash station later, his vision was still slightly blurry.

Tomlinson carefully inspected him. "Looks like you've still got some behind your ears, but you're fine otherwise."

"Coming through from your left, John-boy," Keller advised. "Hold position." He passed by, bearing tent stakes that hadn't been used since the beginning of the month. "Okay, you can move again."

"Does anyone else think we landed a _really_ rotten deal this time?" John took a damp cloth and wiped the remaining dust from his head.

"Looks like your sense of humor's improving, Campbell," remarked Tomlinson. "At least we'll be in the cab. Poor Keller'll have to sit with the spoiled crap all the way to the camp."

"Says you!" Keller retorted. "I'll be wearing my old Tengu armor. I won't smell a thing."

"It's Arizona, man," John reminded. "Won't you cook off in that thing?"

"Nah." Keller shook his head. "You know how hot those Mark Five power suits can get? I fought in one of those back in Michigan. Tengu armor's nothing compared to them."

"That's not a bad idea," said John. "I'll have to see if I can get one for myself tomorrow."

Tomlinson listened to the exchange between the two men with interest. Keller's comment had especially garnered her interest. _Power suits? Why didn't I think of that before?_


	8. The Blood of Patriots

It was in Oregon on August 21, 2017, that a Scarab was first used to assassinate a high-level religious leader. All it took to make history was a Dwarf Gekko with a cheap pistol, an ex-FROG spotter, and a disrespectful rabbi.

Sunny had none of those advantages. In the dusk of September 9, 2035, she would have to make do with what she had on hand.

A group of protesters had set up camp in an RV park ahead; they were in town to take part in the upcoming armed Patriot Day demonstrations. In less than two days' time, they would link up with their comrades in Washington, D.C., and march from Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill, all the while repeating the same demands they had made _ad nauseam_ for the better part of two decades.

Any other country would have rightfully declared a march by hundreds of thousands of angry, armed protesters on its capital an act of war, but not America. Through bitter experience, the country had learned that it was more dangerous to restrain an angry mob than to let it run rampant. After all, these people were the spoiled pigs of one of the "me generations," rabid beasts who, despite touting personal responsibility as the cure for all social and economic problems, refused to admit guilt for any of their misdeeds, preferring to blame their victims instead.

_These people_. Every prayer they uttered, every shot they fired, every breath they took—all of the privileges and luxuries they viewed as God-given rights had been paid for with the blood of unwitting—and unwilling—pawns.

Solid Snake had fought to keep the world from burning, and these people called for America to rearm itself to become a military superpower once again. Thankfully, he died without knowing that everything he had suffered for had been in vain. He certainly wouldn't have been happy to see that at least a quarter of America _wanted_ to be under Patriot control, to be spoon-fed jingoistic propaganda instead of thinking for itself.

Raiden lost most of his body and any chance of living a normal life. More importantly, he lost much of his humanity, and it was only through a _super_human sense of duty that he was still sane, much less a productive member of society. And yet these people had demanded his deportation back to Liberia, calling him an ungrateful immigrant who should have been thankful to have had the privilege of furthering America's military superiority.

In 2009, Otacon—Uncle Hal himself—lost his stepsister, Emma, to a madman. Far from sympathizing with him and his loss, these people criticized Emma for being taken hostage in the first place. Hostages stained America's image, and anything that stained America's image was treasonous; therefore, only traitors to America like Emma Emmerich and President James Johnson would allow themselves to be captured. According to these people, the honorable thing to do was to die resisting; failing that, a measure of honor could be recovered by committing suicide on the spot.

Sunny lost her grandfather to Ocelot and her mother to Solidus. She herself was held hostage by the Patriots and made a test subject in their twisted game. After her rescue, she was forced to spend several years in hiding, living a lonely life aboard the _Nomad_ so she could live at all. And yet these people considered a childhood as an aerial hermit to be better than a normal life.

Not one of these people cared about the suffering endured by so many for the benefit of so few. To them, life on the run was better than paying an extra dollar in taxes on every thousand they made. Being branded as traitors was better than having to accept the loss of a few privileges they had abused for centuries.

These people. _Her_ people. But that would change tonight.

Using her scarf, Sunny created her first chunk of C4 of that outing. She could almost picture the beauty of the coming explosions.

* * *

"Pics received, Maria," announced Tomlinson. "They grow up so fast, don't they? So, you just want me to dig up dirt on that redheaded girl with your boy? Just her?"

"_Affirmative, Lori,_" Maria confirmed. "_You wanna hear something funny that happened over here? Last week, my son called—_"

"We can swap stories next week," Tomlinson interrupted. "I'm not in the mood for a long-ass call right now. Sorry, Maria, but that's the truth. I have a busy week ahead of me. I'm running behind on revising the Conluz contract, and I have to brief my replacement on a shitload of things tomorrow morning. You know how those new kids are."

"_Speaking of kids,_" said Maria, "_Did you recruit that Russian girl yet?_"

"You mean Gurlukovich?" Tomlinson bit her lip. "You could say that. The stories about her are all gross understatements. Except for her cooking, anyway; the girl's as good as Alma."

"_I sense a 'but' coming,_" Maria stated. "_Lemme guess: she's not FROG material, she's too undisciplined, and she knows you like your tea at room temp._"

Tomlinson sighed and wiped her eyes. "Yeah, that's about right. I hate to say it, but we'd be wasting her value if we let her become one of us. Alma's nephew gave me an idea, though. Get this: power suits. You know how Combat Support's been bugging us for volunteers for their heavy infantry squads? I think she'd look great in a Mark Six."

"_Ah, so that's why you called,_" said Maria. "_You wanna requisition one straight from the plant. Sure, we can do that, but it won't be cheap. But why give her a spot as a heavy infantrywoman? From what I've heard, she wiped out a town singlehandedly, and she did it with just a rifle._"

"Haven't you figured it out yet, Gunner? No one I got beef with escapes. I have nothing against her, but I figured I'd give the finger to the Marine Corps and Solid Snake's ghost at the same time."

"_You can't let it go, can you, Lori? It's been over twenty years. Can't you see what it's done to you, Colonel?_"

"Oh, just forgive them! Sure, why not? Can't you see what forgiving your enemies has done to _you_, Maria?" Tomlinson countered. "Not all of us bounced back after the war. Hell, some of us can never go home!

"Shayda can never go back to the U.K., and she'd given twelve of her best years to the Royal Marines before she gave one to us. The French deported Thanh's entire family because she wanted to make a little extra money. Russian thugs tried to kill Irina for badmouthing the warmongers in power after she retired.

"What about Faiza? She had to shoot her way out of Karachi and kill her own family so they wouldn't stone her to death. The word of an ignorant neckbeard theocrat means more than the truth there, and a lot of Pakistanis still think she's a blasphemer and adulteress who should be killed on sight.

"What about you, Gunner? Since you've been calling yourself 'Maria Cruz' for so long, I gotta ask, do you even remember your real name? I seem to remember our best sniper was a Japanese-American named Mari—"

"_Lori…_" Maria warned. "_Drop it. I'm not her anymore._"

"I'm sorry," Tomlinson apologized, her voice calmer, "Sorry, Maria." She shook her head. "I didn't mean to rant. Kinney's the last man on my hit list; I'll stop after he's—"

"_Wait!_" Maria suddenly shouted, rage seeping into her voice. "_Kinney? _Charles_ Kinney? The motherfucker who murdered Punita and Ambrosine on the _Missouri_?_"

"And the guy who tried to kill your boy back in '17," Tomlinson added. "Don't forget that." She allowed for a pause, wanting the words to sink in. "But I don't need to tell you that; you blasted his old lady and his kid as payback three years ago. As I was saying earlier, Charlie Kinney's the last one on my hit list. You remember our style, right? How we kill our real targets last so they can shit their pants knowing a bunch of evil grannies are coming for them?"

"_In that case, _I_ should be the one apologizing to _you_,"_ said Maria. "_Do whatever it takes, Lori. Kill for the living._"

"Kill for the dead," Tomlinson replied, continuing the oath. "He'll get his."

* * *

A group of protesters had huddled together in a circle, cautiously inspecting the cardboard box that had suddenly appeared within their camp. If their security guard was telling the truth, then the lightweight container had moved on its own. Knowing that the old man had had a little too much to drink, a few young men decided to check it out for themselves. They slowly opened the box, uncovering a stash of high explosives.

From her vantage point several hundred meters away, Sunny could see everything happening. She absently pressed a button on her detonator.

Nothing happened.

Or, more accurately, nothing happened that the protesters cared about. Sunny had set off an improvised Claymore mine several blocks away, killing a tagging crew defacing a newly-repainted wall. Soon, it would be these "patriots'" turn to refresh the tree of liberty with their blood, but not yet. Death was far too lenient a punishment for them, and they needed to be vilified by the world even further.

She took out her phone and dialed a local gang. _This should make things interesting!_


	9. Little Changes, Big Migraines

The TV and lights were on when John arrived home. Numbly, he kicked off his shoes and removed his jacket, feeling too exhausted to do much else that night. All he wanted to do was take a shower, maybe have a snack, and go to bed.

Unfortunately, Murphy's Law was about to make him its bitch. Moving with a speed that bordered on inhuman, his mother grabbed and hugged him.

"John, you're home!" Rose said, almost crushing her son. "We have a lot of catching up to do!" Noting John's dejected look, she asked, "What's wrong?"

"Mom, not tonight." John reluctantly slipped from his mother's grasp. "I've had a long day. I had…" He paused, not knowing whether to mention the people he'd killed that morning. It took him all of a second to decide against it. "I had to deliver a lot of stuff to Sunny today, and those crates weighed a ton. Right now, I really hate that Genya guy she's buying from."

The TV's volume was suddenly muted. Raiden stood from where he was sitting and nodded knowingly at his son. "What about Otacon?" he asked.

"Otacon's out of the country." John sighed, growing even more fatigued. "He's in Japan, doing something for his company. Sunny said he'll be back at the end of the month. Why? What's this about?"

"You haven't heard yet," Raiden realized. He gestured at the TV. "Take a look."

The scheduled cartoon had been preempted by a special report. Allegedly, there had been multiple terrorist attacks in Armistead that day. A family notorious for its despicable protests against fallen UN troopers got massacred by an unknown assailant. Local law enforcement was ambushed on their way to secure the crime scene, suffering total casualties. A sniper team tried—and failed—to assassinate Sheriff Kinney himself. Gangbangers attacked a group of "patriot" protesters after they themselves had suffered losses to an IED. Those "patriots" were found to be in possession of several kilograms of C4 matching the kind used in a string of murders and hate crimes, including the IED attack that evening.

Said "patriots" were now holding a press conference. As expected, they were crying about how a bunch of illegals had fired on upstanding citizens for no legitimate reason. Their spokesman went on and on about how President Morris was at fault for not spending more on defense and, at the same time, excessively taxing red-blooded Americans.

"Son of a…" John stopped, cutting off his curse. "Look at them! They killed several people, and they're calling _themselves_ the victims?"

"You expected anything else?" Raiden sat back down. Gruffly, he asked, "Have you been paying attention in the last twenty years, boy? This is only going to get worse. We're going to need Otacon's help soon, or there's going to be a lot of bloodshed."

* * *

"Like old times?" the gangbanger repeated. "I've been waiting for this day for years!" He saluted Sunny by thumping his clenched right fist over his heart. "It was good seeing you again."

"Likewise," Sunny replied. She returned the salute and hugged him. "This is almost as fun as college! Remember that time when you guys got busted and I had to break your asses outta jail?"

The gangbanger stroked his goatee as he remembered the incident. "Aw, yeah, that was straight badass, what you did. You capped six pigs before they could pull on you, and you did it with a deuce-deuce." A chill ran down his spine as memories of many expert shooters' attempts to duplicate the trick came to mind. "That's s'posed to be impossible."

Sunny almost rolled her eyes at his comment. "No, it's not _easy_. It's definitely _possible_." She glanced at the RV park, noting that the protesters had finished removing the corpses of their attackers. Similarly, the last of the news vans had departed. "What's impossible is what _you_ pulled. Getting the local Mara and a mob of chickenhawk tough guys to kill each other on such short notice? Fuck what I did; that takes talent."

"You got them Katies ready?" the gangbanger suddenly asked.

"They're called Katyushas," Sunny corrected, "and they're just one type out of many I hid last week. We also got Grads, Qassams, EXTRAS, and even a bunch of missiles I'd only heard about. But yeah, they've been ready for a few days now. Just say the word, and you'll see the 'Star Spangled Banner' played out in explosions."

The gangbanger's eyes widened. He knew Sunny well enough to tell that she had gone overboard in generating ammo once again. "How many of 'em you got?"

Sunny shrugged. "Hmm… I lost count after the sixth cache. I'd say… about twenty-five thousand rockets. Fuck if I know how many missiles." She tugged on her scarf. "And it's all thanks to this baby. It itches like hell, but damn if it isn't useful!" Her eyes lit up mischievously. "Wanna see what else I can do?"

* * *

"_The Reb surrendered, ma'am,_" the Tengu reported."_Please advise._"

"Charlie Kilo," said Tomlinson, "and November Sierra this time." As an afterthought, she added, "And burn the town to the ground." She took a sip of her tea and grimaced. Whoever added the sugar must have been a native Virginian. There had to be a full ounce's worth in her cup.

"_Ma'am? Please say again_," the Tengu begged. He was a combat veteran desensitized to killing, but Tomlinson was signing the death warrant of an entire town because it had sheltered _one_ man guilty of terrorism against the United Nations. This was an accepted tactic for the Chinese PLA in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, but not for DREBINS in the United States.

"My advice is to burn Stratton to the ground," Tomlinson repeated, "and kill every single resident you find. Do you need help with your jargon, Sergeant? Okay, listen up. 'Charlie Kilo': continue killing. 'November Sierra': no survivors. Listen, Sergeant, I fought shitbags like these in Pakistan. A few hundred or twenty thousand; it doesn't matter: If you don't kill every last one of them, they _will_ hunt you down after the war ends. Is that clear?"

"_Yes ma'am,_" hissed the Tengu sergeant. Evidently, he was uncomfortable with the advice he had been given, but knew his choices were limited between committing mass murder and having his own family killed in a revenge attack several years down the line.

Tomlinson shook her head as she broke the connection. She took little joy from telling other people to massacre civilians, but she knew all too well that "hearts and minds" strategies were wastes of time and resources. Often, the targeted populations were too far gone in their hatred. Other times, they were too greedy, believing they had a divine right to the goods and services intended to be an olive branch between the outsiders and the natives. No matter which natives were in question, the observation could be made that they had more in common with rabid animals than anything remotely human.

No, that was inaccurate. At least rabid animals had a disease to excuse their behavior; hatred was a choice. People _chose_ to hate. They _chose_ to kill.

They _chose_ to be killed in return.

As for greed, if animals could be shot for taking a few bites out of something they shouldn't, why should it be any different for humans? The answer frequently given was that indigenous cultures and traditions had to be respected. Fuck that, Tomlinson thought, human rights come first, and anything and anyone infringing upon those rights deserved only extinction.

_Greed._ What an unfortunate reminder of the task she had at hand. Tomlinson resumed editing her contract with Celia. In the mere hours after she'd notified Construction, their lower-level workers raised hell that a twenty percent discount translated into a total reduction of their bonuses for the Conluz project in Europe, their union immediately ordering work to be slowed until their extra pay was reinstated.

As dawn and a new work week were about to begin over there, yet night was falling over America, it would take at least all of Monday to resolve the labor dispute on the west side of the Atlantic. Tuesday would have to be wasted relaying the information to Construction in Europe and fine-tuning the translation. Wednesday would be needed to inform the workers over there, and while a half-hour explanation would do, the slack that had been the norm for two days would have had enough time to affect their morale and expectations. On Thursday, the laborers would speed up work, only to slow down again on Friday because of a "Prayers and Booze" clause in their union's contract.

It was now estimated that the deathtrap of a castle wouldn't be completed until early April 2036, a few weeks after the originally scheduled date. With interior decoration factored in, that date was pushed back even further to October; some of the exotic plants Celia had demanded for the central garden had a short window in which they would flower, and an April planting _just_ missed that deadline by a few days.

Tomlinson massaged her aching head. _One little mistake, one _hell_ of a lot of suffering!_

* * *

"Hey, Keller? It's John. Listen, I don't know when you'll get this message, but I need to know how many power-suit infantry Combat Support's deployed to Washington. See you tomorrow morning." Sighing, John replaced the receiver.

"Anything?" Raiden asked.

John shook his head. "Straight to voicemail. Right now, all I can give you is a range between Keller's old squad and every operator from within a three-hundred mile radius."

"That's still not enough," Raiden commented. "Those rebels mean business this year. Your friends don't stand a chance without Otacon's help."

"Your father's right, John," Rose cut in. "The demonstrators have far too many guns for this to end well. Please, stay home."

"Mom, you know how much I want to," said John, "but this is bigger than DREBINS. I _have_ to go."

"Then what are you fighting for, boy?" Raiden demanded. "This country? You're a fool. What has America done for you after everything you've given it? Everything you have, you've had to fight to take for yourself. You owe it nothing, and you owe its people even less."

"America can burn, for all I care," John retorted. "I'm going so I can whack someone who's had it coming for a long time. Listen, Dad, if you want, you can come with me. Otherwise, I'll give your regards to Sunny after she's done leveling the city."

* * *

"We planning to hit them bitches in the west at daylight," reminded the gangbanger. "I need sumthin' bigger than this, or at least lots more than what you got."

"What exactly do you want that dead?" Sunny asked. "'Cause, you know… twenty-five thousand rockets and the rest?"

"These motherfuckers," the gangbanger said, pulling out a tablet PC and scrolling to a folder containing images of vehicles laden with familiar war machines. "Right there," he pointed out for extra emphasis.

It was a sight Sunny had hoped to never see again. According to the first few photographs, the demonstrators had at least a dozen IRVINGs supporting them. Then, a dozen became a score, and a score became a hundred. The current image showed a vehicle crew in an IRVING-like cockpit, but as Gekkos were unmanned, there was only one contraption they could have been piloting.

"Metal Gear…" Sunny breathed. The explosives she had planted as evidence against the "patriots" were unnecessary, she realized. This was no mere protest they had planned.

They were plotting a full-blown rebellion.


	10. Loyalist Conspiracies

_She stood in the burning ruins of what was once a hotbed for extremism, her assault rifle's barrel glowing from overuse. Hundreds had died this morning, and if she had her way, many more would perish before the end of the day._

_But where were they? The vermin had scattered at the first sign of trouble, with the majority running and a few brave souls making for their weapons caches. What had begun as a target-rich environment was slowing becoming a necropolis unworthy even of her contempt. Enemies were scarce, yet she had not fully sated her bloodlust. So where were those fuckers hiding?_

_There, in the storage room! All it had taken was the silhouette of someone's foot under the door to give away their position. A mere shadow had doomed them all._

_Wary of a possible ambush on the other side, she placed a breaching charge on the door and detonated it. Bits of wooden shrapnel blasted the people sheltering inside, suppressing them and allowing her to charge in to assess and destroy her enemies._

_What she found hiding in that cramped room was exactly what she expected: civilians. She was murdering scared, misguided people with little to no will to fight her._

_But they _had_ resisted her, and for that, every last one had to die._

_They begged her for mercy. She, in return, simply placed her rifle on full-auto and opened fire. Death was a form of mercy, a release from the torments of religious and political extremism, was it not?_

_It was at that point that she received a CODEC call. Hadn't she told her companions not to contact her unless it was important? Brushing her lightly-colored hair from her ear, she prepared to receive either an extremely important report or a _very_ profuse apology._

"Metal Gear! We have a Metal Gear inbound! Whatever you're doing, do it fast!_"_

* * *

Sunny awoke and turned off her alarm clock minutes before it was set to ring. _Metal Gear_, she cursed. It just had to be that death machine.

What didn't these people understand? Wherever those steel monsters walked, death and destruction followed. Hadn't they learned that lesson from the Arizona rampage all those years back? Did they want more people killed?

Stupid question. _Of course_ they wanted more people killed; violence that befell others was entertainment. It was only a tragedy when they themselves were hurt.

She numbly got up, the memory of the Saudi massacre lingering in her mind. Hundreds more had fallen by her hand since then, and the individual faces of some ignorant fundies killed near the Kuwaiti border meant little to her.

Sunny pushed the thoughts out of her mind. Daybreak was less than two hours away, and she had calls to make before heading out.

* * *

Tomlinson brushed the crust off her eyes and opened them. A groan of frustration escaped her lips as she realized she'd fallen asleep in her office.

Nudging her laptop's mouse forward revealed that she'd been out for about three hours. She'd dreamed of the Arizona incident yet again, and it was no wonder why: her wallpaper was of her personal Metal Gear RAY. Tomlinson had acquired the walker during that particular massacre, one of the most stressful battles of her life.

Compared to REX and the rest of the Metal Gears, RAY was a lightly-armored walker that could dish out a lot of damage, yet couldn't take much in return. RAY was just another expensive collection of parts once its legs were crippled. Disabling a RAY, though, was lot less fun when it had to be done with just an underbarrel grenade launcher. Blasting it in the legs wasn't easy, and watching it bleed triggered unpleasant reactions in some of her teammates.

Shayda, the Iranian-British former Royal Marine, had performed a number of kneecappings on terrorists and children alike and found RAY's mechanical scream far more disturbing than torturing humans. Her stint on _Outer Haven_ meant that she had served with Metal Gears, and seeing one of those majestic machines wounded and crying out in pain was not a pleasant experience.

Faiza, by contrast, was enraged that their enemies had dared to fight back. She had spent years away from home to make a better future for her family. Soldiering was one of the most stressful, underpaying occupations known to mankind, and that was before familial obligations were factored in. After years of sending heavy remittances home to support her family, after denying herself even the Spartan pleasures of which the rest of her sisters-in-arms partook, after having to fight every step of the way out of the United States, and after years of pious devotion to her religion, she had gone home to find herself accused of adultery and blasphemy. There was no way in hell she could forgive that betrayal, no way she would ever be happy again until the entire world burned.

Faiza wasn't the one to finish off the RAY, though; that honor belonged to Maria Cruz. Still recovering from giving birth to her son a few months earlier, Maria had tagged along on one last mission with her sisters-in-arms, reprising her role as a sniper. With one perfect shot, she neutralized the war machine's operator, allowing it to be captured and sent to DREBINS for repair and refurbishment. She thought nothing of her deed, claiming that it was simply her job.

_Maria Cruz_, Tomlinson thought, shaking her head. _Who does she think she's kidding?_ Only changing a name was a bad idea when it came to disguises, especially when the new name was so similar to the old one. _She could've put a _little_ more effort into it!_

But that was Maria's decision, not hers. The day Lori Tomlinson wanted to control such trivial aspects of other people's lives was the day she could no longer call herself a FROG.

In any case, it was a brand new day. The morning shift employees hadn't arrived yet, but if Tomlinson didn't want to drink that horrid, ultra-sweet caramel so many people insisted was tea, she would have to brew her own. That meant boiling vessels, and she was in no mood to listen to a kettle's whistle today. She was already scheduled to brief that annoying sniper today, after all.

* * *

Miles away, a camp of protesters felt the same way. They wanted nothing more than for the incessant whistling to stop, only to realize too late that the source of the noise was an artillery rocket.

The first projectile exploded outside the perimeter, blasting dust and debris into the air. Dozens more crashed into landscape around the camp, forming a circle of craters that forced the gathered population to seek shelter.

And then, it was over. As the last low-yield rocket landed outside, destroying the dirt road that led into the camp, the shaken survivors slowly realized that no one on their side had been killed. Even better, all of the rockets had been launched from a hill to the west—their attackers were just _that_ incompetent.

Emboldened by their fortune, the protesters organized an impromptu counterattack. Gathering their weapons, they formed at the gates and prepared to charge out of their base to engage and kill their attackers.

They realized too late that they had fallen for their enemies' ruse.

From the east, thousands of false suns rose over the horizon to cleanse the dark souls of false patriots.

* * *

"_John-boy, got your message,_" said Keller. "_Sorry it took so long to answer. My phone died on me last night, and it took for-fucking-ever to fix it. Anyway, I'm at work right now, and I asked one of my guys how many we're sending to the District tomorrow. Can't give you an estimate yet, but it looks like we'll be badly outnumbered. Bye._"

"John-boy?" Rose asked. "Aw, how cute!"

"Keller outranks me," John quickly explained as his cheeks reddened. God, how he hated that nickname! It was still better than what his mother used to call him, though. "Plus," he added, "he's Combat Support. Different culture."

"Thank God you're just a salesman. Your father would probably kill you himself if you ever put yourself on the front lines."

"Yeah, he probably would," John agreed. "Where is Dad, anyway?"

"He left while you were in the shower," Rose answered. "I think he went to Doctor Emmerich's home."

* * *

"Come in, Jack," Sunny said. As Raiden entered, she glanced outside to make sure he hadn't been followed before shutting the door. "I wasn't expecting you to show so early. What brings you here today? I thought you weren't coming 'til tomorrow."

Raiden paused. "John didn't tell you?"

"His business is his business," Sunny stated plainly. "I don't ask what he does and he only asks me what I do when he absolutely needs to. Works out pretty well for both of us. So tell me, what do you need?"

"I came to get…" Raiden began. He trailed off as he noticed some unopened crates stacked against the walls of the living room. "Are those the goods?"

Sunny traced his line of sight to the boxes and nodded. "Yep. Genya came through for us. Most of them are melee weapons—blades and blunts—but there _are_ some of those special weapons mixed in."

"The item codes?" asked Raiden. He began walking toward the containers, noting the characters spray-painted on the side.

Sunny thought for a moment. "Niner-alpha-two and niner-delta-one through –four… I think." She shrugged and motioned for him to follow. "Come on. The real stuff's in the vault, and we got a lot of catching up to do."

* * *

Tomlinson finished typing and looked up. She watched her replacement grimace as he swallowed a mouthful of his drink. "Goddamn, Lori, this is horrible. It tastes like that crap they serve in Louisiana. I can still taste the tea."

"Sorry about that, Al. I normally take mine unsweetened." Tomlinson opened one of her desk's drawers. "You want me to get you some sweetener? I keep a jar in my desk."

"Hell no!" objected a horrified Al. "Artificial sweetener makes it taste even worse than corn syrup. And you're supposed to boil the sugar _with_ the water. Otherwise, you end up with a pile of wet sugar at the bottom."

"Pile?" Tomlinson repeated. "Al, just how much sugar do you use?"

"One ounce for every eight of water. That's not much compared to what real men use, I know, but I'm trying _not_ to get diabetes." Al looked at his watch and noticed the time. "Isn't your break over?"

"Just about. You want me to brief you now?"

"Better now than later," said Al. "Go ahead."

"I'll make this short. Next week, I'll be in Arizona." Tomlinson turned the laptop around to let her replacement see the screen. "I'm supposed to deliver some distressed food to the internment camp over there." She gestured at the list of bullet points. "This is what you have to do. Any questions?"

"Give me a minute," Al mumbled. He scanned the list and noticed something strange. "Orientation for a brass shoveler?" he asked, referring to the new hire scheduled to start next Monday. "Do you do this for everyone?"

"Only for those named Sunny Gurlukovich," Tomlinson replied. "You know her, right? Your buddy from the Corps gave her a job."

"Gurlukovich… the white-haired Russian girl with a habit of blowing shit up?" He swallowed another mouthful of tea, trying to ease his discomfort. "Lori, listen to me: that girl is a psycho. The funeral massacre three years back? That was all her. Van had nothing to do with it."

"I figured as much," Tomlinson dismissed. "Never send a man to do a woman's job." She exhaled, propped her elbows on the desk, clasped her hands, and bowed her head. "Not even the great Van Nguyen had the balls to kill dozens of kids himself. It took a college student with a massive chip on her shoulder to do shit that gave _Faiza_ nightmares. Imagine that."

* * *

They were nightmares made reality.

Clad in black and gold power suits and armed with variants of the Patriot weapon system, the trio of women would have been a match for an elite enemy force dozens of times larger even if they had been newbies.

But they weren't. These women were veterans of a dozen wars, having been in action ever since the War Economy Era. Their entire existence revolved around war and killing, and not by choice.

They killed because to stop would give their enemies a chance to kill _them_. They tortured innocents because they were too few in number to afford their foes even a sliver of compassion. They committed genocide to prevent future generations from siding with their enemies.

Officially, they were on-site to field-test their new weapons, a flimsy excuse given that the AR-15/M-16 platform had already undergone around seventy years of continuous testing. This exercise was a catharsis for these ladies, an expression of their contempt for the values that their enemies held so dear. They had been wronged by these so-called "patriots" in the past, and now, they were retaliating for these offenses by echoing the same excuses used by their enemies long ago.

At the center of their formation was their leader, an exiled Briton lugging around a Patriot carbine with an underbarrel grenade launcher. On the right flank was the fireteam's automatic riflewoman, who carried the SAW variant.

The woman on the left was equipped with an experimental Patriot Marksman's Rifle, yet she elected not to use the weapon. Instead, she opted to use her arm-mounted solar cannon to blast anyone who had survived the initial bombardment.

They marched on-line through the smoldering ruins of the camp. Here and there, they found survivors of their allied gang's rocket barrage, whom they executed without breaking stride.

"I don't give a fuck what they call themselves," the woman in the center of the fireteam mocked as she splattered a man's head with a double tap. "Libertarians, Patriots, Jeffersonians, Real Americans—they're _traitors_. Full stop." She shifted aim, targeted a group of moaning patriots, and fired off a few bursts. "Innocents have been under attack by those bloody animals for centuries now. My position: kill the buggers!"

"Contact ten low," the right guard announced. She leveled her SAW at a barely-conscious old man who had had all four limbs blown off by the rocket attacks. "Oh, no! Subject is armed! Engaging!" She hesitated for split-second to simulate the pause that would have prevented the deaths of her loved ones, a pause that the soldier who murdered them years before had not taken. Then she fired a long burst, injecting copper-jacketed lead into a self-proclaimed Real American.

"Got a bunch of civvies here—wait, one's got a weapon!" The left guard brought her arm cannon to bear on a cluster of incapacitated children and held down the trigger. "Fire! Fire! Kill them all! Come on, a million civilians aren't worth a single soldier's fingernail! Kill so you can keep being arrogant! Torture and maim for your security! Burn the world and everyone who disagrees!"

As her cannon cooled, so did her temper. "Oops. Guess I was wrong. They were unarmed. But it's okay; since we're Special Forces, we're completely immune from prosecution." A sad, humorless chuckle escaped from her lips. "You know why? Because we're the best people on the planet! We represent everything that's right with humans and the world! None of you could ever be, nor ever aspire to be, half as good of a human being as the worst of us!

"All of us deserve a third chance!" she continued, her long-suppressed grief and rage resurfacing at last. "A fourth chance! As many chances as we want! We fail because _you_ stab us in the back! It's all your fault, civilians! Every last man, woman and child! _It's all your fault!_"

That was the code for no survivors remaining. As one, the women paused in their tracks. They drew their target designators, launched fire support markers into the ground, and waited for the allied firebase to receive the new fire mission. Once the women confirmed the coordinates, they turned around and headed back the way they came.

"Right, it's the _soldier_ who gives you your freedoms," the warrior in the center jested, "not your own laws. But at the end of the day, it's the _civilian_ who has to pick up the bloody pieces." She motioned for her teammates to form up. "On me, team. Let's go home." As the left guard fell in, she added, "And Colonel Zia, we need to talk later."

* * *

Sheriff Kinney was glad he hadn't eaten breakfast yet. If he had, there was no guarantee he could have kept it down.

It was a brand new day and the loyalists had committed another atrocity. This time, they had bombed dozens of patriot staging areas simultaneously, killing thousands of demonstrators in the third-worst terrorist attack on American soil since 2009.

Kinney was no detective, but he was a retired Marine and knew the work of a punitive force by the destruction left in its wake. It was why he knew to be scared where more ignorant men would have disregarded the ample warning signs scattered around the charred killing field.

Some patriots had evidently survived the rocket storm, but were subsequently executed by an assault unit. Based on the deep bootprints left in the soil, there were three killers, each wearing a suit of power armor. Further examination of the prints showed that the monsters were women, and Kinney knew the identities of two of them.

Only the rightmost set of tracks puzzled him. It wasn't the Butcher of Uganda; she was retired. The Demon of Kandahar _couldn't_ have made those tracks; she was the one on the left. Longhair was the one in the center, which ruled her out. There was no chance that Crucifix, Cross, or whatever the hell she called herself was involved; she would have shot them all from long range.

Could it be? Had the Lady of Toluca Lake, the woman who torched Pennsylvania to eliminate a disgraceful ex-Marine of a serial killer, come down to Virginia at long last? _No_, Kinney told himself. She was more of a subgunner, preferring her honorless P-90 and booby traps to a real gun. _This is someone _much_ worse_, he thought.

Speaking of guns, the small arms used in the massacre were chambered for 6.5 Grendel. There were plenty of weapons firing that cartridge, but only one entity also used power suits.

DREBINS. All the militias were playing right into their enemies' hands by buying from the organization that had installed its puppets into the country's highest offices, and they didn't even know it.

He had to warn the cells, but how? His reputation was shot; he was considered even more unreliable than those three fire support beacons buried in the dirt up ahead.

_Three fire support beacons?_ Kinney realized to his horror. If they were heartbeat-sensing as well, then this was a trap! He had to get out before—

Too late. The Tomahawk impacted just a few meters from where he was standing.


	11. Malice Aforethought

The ground shook as a puff of dust rose from the explosion.

"God-fucking-damn it!" Tomlinson raged, repeatedly bringing her high-frequency sledgehammer down on the concrete brick. "Why! Won't! You! Die!"

"You mad, ma'am?" Keller asked.

"What the fuck does it look like?" She brought the hammer down once again, reducing more of the block into gravel.

Keller shrugged. "I dunno. You sound like you just got trolled."

"Charlie survived!" Tomlinson screamed in frustration. "We dropped a fucking TLAM on him, and he walked away unhurt! How the _fuck_ does that happen?"

"I got no idea, ma'am. I'm just here to tell you a Ms. Porter's calling."

"Fine," Tomlinson grumbled, deactivating her hammer and removing her protective goggles. "Give me a minute, then patch me through."

"Uh, ma'am," Keller hesitantly said, "I mean she's calling for you from your office. She's here in person, and she doesn't look happy. Something about resolving a labor dispute in Spain?"

* * *

Kinney's hands were still shaking as he exited his vehicle. Yet again, he'd survived an assassination attempt, but this was the closest one in years.

His enemies had upped the ante. Instead of sending the usual car bomb or sniper team to take him out, they had launched a Tomahawk missile against him. They were willing to waste an expensive cruise missile just to kill him.

There was only one reason he could have survived, he reasoned: divine intervention. Nothing else could explain why the precision-guided cruise missile missed him by several meters, nor why it failed to detonate until he had gotten back in his car and driven a safe distance away.

Still, there remained a disturbing question: Who the hell had he pissed off so badly that they would kill thousands of people and fire off a precision-guided cruise missile just to get at him? If only he could find Doc Emmerich or his niece, they'd be able to locate and end the fuckers once and for all.

But that was for another day. Doc Nguyen's diner was about to open, and all this danger had made him even hungrier than before.

* * *

"I don't get it," said Sunny. "You mean you missed? How the hell did that happen? You know what? Fuck it. Call an emergency meeting: all OGs, usual place. I'll see you in a few hours. Laters." She replaced the phone, slumped to the ground, and placed her head in her hands. "Oh, God, why me?"

"What was that about?" Raiden gruffly asked.

"That?" Sunny jerked a thumb at the phone. "That was Yuri Fernandez, one of my college buddies. Right now, he's a squad leader in the gang I run with. I told him not to call me back until tomorrow night unless something went wrong with the bombings. The Tomahawk he used to try to kill a secondary target took too long to blow up, so now, not only do we have to face our contractors and tell them just how we fucked up, we might have a fatass pig trying to kill us on top of the Metal Gear we'll be facing tomorrow."

"You didn't…" Raiden began.

"I did." Sunny sighed and pressed a hand to her forehead. "Jack, you should know better than anyone just how corrupt the world is. Do you remember when you came over…" she paused for a moment to calculate the date, "fourteen years ago? Remember how, when you came back from the cemetery, you saw a shitload of dead SWAT guys in front of the house next door?"

"I remember," said Raiden. "They were trying to take you away from Otacon."

"And they used a textbook bullshit excuse to justify their little raid," finished Sunny. "'It was for your own good, young lady,'" she mocked, scoffing at the words of the Child Protective Services agent responsible for organizing the operation. "I've heard that line almost as much as 'we're doing this for you.' Please. With the way these control freaks put it, you'd think _everything_ is being done for me and_ everything_ is for my own good."

Raiden slowly knelt on the ground next to her. "Sunny," he cautiously asked, "I get that you hate the law; I do too. But joining a gang?" He shook his head. "That's just not healthy."

"Okay, Jack: One, I didn't _join_ the gang," Sunny explained. "I helped start it with Yuri and Old Ricky. Two, we copied John's gang in everything except the name. Three, we technically didn't commit any crimes until recently." She bit her lip as she remembered an incident involving a senator and his family. "Okay, so maybe we got a little carried away with Smackgate, but we got Zeissner doing a life bid under the laws he himself wrote. And four, we're the ones who brought Doc Rabinowitz to your attention. We—"

"Back up," Raiden interrupted. "Your people put a _U.S. senator in prison_?"

"Zeissner needed to go," said Sunny. "Not only did he try to deport the Fernandezes to Mexico, he sent goons to fuck up their home. Well, Yuri and his folks aren't Mexican. Their ancestors sailed here from Spain, and they've been Americans longer than Texas has been a state. Some patriot the good senator was."

* * *

It was an easy shot to prove that the weapon undergoing quality control testing could cycle the ammunition so soon after a caliber change. As expected, no problems arose; things were going smoothly and the shooter had finished yet another set of trials.

John released the Patriot's magazine, ejected the chambered round, and removed the upper receiver. "Okay," he breathed, "QC for Grendel and Beowulf is done. Anything left, Sergeant Karnstein?"

The fourth-generation trainee from Michigan, a black-haired, pasty-faced woman looked at her PDA and shook her head. "No, sir. Beowulf was the last."

"Good." John brushed the accumulated brass into an awaiting bag. "Here. You can have this one."

"You don't want it, sir?" Karnstein asked. She reached for the bag and was floored by how much it weighed.

The senior Drebin shook his head. "Nah, they're not worth much. They probably wouldn't even get me a twelve-pack of NARC."

That was a statement within DREBINS of just how little the casings were worth. The makers of NARC Cola had folded due to the recent gum arabic scandal, condemned to liquidation. Its main competitor, the juggernaut that produced a popular lime soda, decided to use that opportunity to end its rival once and for all.

And so, a company that had its origins in a group that fought for freedom from Patriot control found itself enslaved to a giant corporation. That corporation, in turn, was a subsidiary of the union of gun launderers and ex-PMC troops that had bought out AT Security.

"Mr. Campbell?" a new voice called out. "Drebin 2012 John Campbell?"

"Sir?" John automatically replied. He turned around and saw a young Combat Support officer wheeling a heavy container into the room. "Is that my exoskeleton, Lieutenant?"

"Aye, Mr. Campbell," the lieutenant confirmed. "You'll need to sign for it before we start running the calibration tests."

* * *

Colonel Faiza Zia removed her glasses and blinked away the fatigue in her bloodshot eyes as she finished rereading the after-action report. There truly was a civil war waiting to happen if protesters were planning to march on the capital with Gekko and Metal Gear support. Thanks to the actions of a few locals, most of the war machines were no longer a factor.

Fernandez and his tiny band of gangsters had somehow fired over twenty thousand rockets within a four-minute span, completely obliterating twenty-seven small base camps and severely damaging several more. Someone within his command structure must have held a minor grudge against their targets, because the gang was willing to waste perfectly good Tomahawks to kill individual survivors who weren't named Charles Kinney.

Strangely, Fernandez was unable to kill the murderous ex-Marine that had been a bonus target. By all accounts, the Tomahawk had been meticulously inspected up until it was launched. The missile was found to be in perfect condition each time, yet it missed Kinney by several meters and failed to detonate until after he was clear.

"This Fernandez boy…" she began, unsure if the longhaired officer at the window was even paying attention, "he's in charge of those arty psychos? Why did you even hire him, Esfahani?"

"Because I've worked with him." General Shayda Esfahani continued to stare out the tinted window, watching the flow of traffic several stories below. To a woman who'd seen more war than peace in her life, it was a relaxing sight, even if the cars were driving on the other side of the road. "Good lad to have with you; he appreciates the SLR's finer qualities."

"You… don't suppose he's the Bad Egg we've heard so much about?" Faiza nervously asked. "He fits the profile: blond hair, ripped, a crack shot, vendetta against the law, massive bombings against his enemies."

"Scared?" The exiled Iranian-Briton placed her right index finger on the glass, covering the image of a distant church. Slowly, she dragged her digit down, imagining the people who had filled the unassuming structure not twenty-four hours ago. If only she could have gotten here sooner, she could have burned the crusaders within like their counterparts half a world away. It was the least she could have done to a group of people who had willingly distorted noble ideals to justify their power grabs. Each and every last one of their leaders' actions was carefully, maliciously plotted to maximize harm to others, yet they still lived.

"Of course I am, Shay." Faiza turned the AAR over. "I'm as willing to kill babies as the next woman, but a cemetery's holy ground. Even those subhumans in Kandahar showed a bit of respect for their martyrs. Even if her methods suck, _Celia_ has good intentions. The Bad Egg doesn't. He wiped out a funeral just for the hell of it. What kind of honorless scumbag does that?"

* * *

He wore wigs. Snake had OctoCamo in addition to a bandana. Still, neither of them could combine infinite ammo with stealth camouflage.

Big Boss could, but even he was limited to a maximum of three reality-warping effects at once. For this to happen, he had to paint his face with infinity symbols, carry a five-and-a-half-pound stealth camouflage unit, and wear special fatigues.

All of those men restrained themselves from relying too heavily on advanced technology or "magic" on the premise that needing it was the mark of an amateur. They were all procure on-site experts, bound by self-imposed rules and honor that would have gotten normal men killed dozens of times over.

Unlike them, she would use any advantage she could acquire. There was no benefit to following rules in war, unless those rules encouraged depravity and ruthlessness. Honor was subjective; executing a wounded man may be merciful in some circles, but in others, allowing a casualty to suffer for the rest of his or her life as a useless vegetable was considered more noble.

And, above all else, rules and honor had value only if the other side was willing to submit to the same restrictions. That was what made Sunny Gurlukovich so dangerous to her enemies: she obeyed others only when it suited her. Otherwise, she was the dirtiest, most ruthless operator known to mankind.

Before earning the right to purchase her scarf at a discount—which still wiped out her bank accounts—Sunny had had to promote an ex-FROG with a record of making gold members' lives miserable to a moderator position within a game. It may not have sounded like a big deal, but mods and admins were able to view IP logs and otherwise hidden e-mail addresses. The FROG used that information to track down particularly offensive players to maim and kill them in real life. In other words, to save a million dollars on designer clothing, Sunny gave a leader of hundreds of deranged killers a target list and targeting information.

But Sunny hadn't been fully corrupted. Despite her ruthlessness and dishonorable nature, she retained her creativity and generosity. Of all the operators blessed with unlimited ammo, she was the first to recognize the ability's potential to help people. She was the one who realized that since nearly _everything_ had been thrown, shot, dropped, bounced, placed, or otherwise used as ammo, any object could be created—or _re_created.

Her experiments with Snake's 2.5 million Drebin Point bandana revealed that it was possible to create food and drugs, but the conjured objects weren't persistent. As soon as she unequipped the bandana, any unused items vanished back into the ether. While it made selling tranquilizers and other illegal drugs impossible, it also made distributing lifesaving medicines difficult. How summoned food could remain in the material world was better left unremembered; a supersonic potato could do a surprising amount of damage to a human body.

The Tanegashima provided a stopgap solution to these problems. If a ball was fired into the wind, there was a chance that it could generate a tornado. Any bodies—warm or dead—that got in the tornado's way would be lifted into the air and spun around. The items those bodies were carrying would, obviously, fall out of any pouches or pockets, explaining the massive amounts of ammo boxes and rations left behind in the tornado's wake.

Or so it was originally thought. After one such whirlwind appeared during combat operations near Chicago, it was discovered that the materiel strewn about the battlefield did not match the items carried by the dead. Indeed, it was nearly impossible (and certainly impractical) for _each_ of those killed to have carried a minimum of five ammo cans, to say nothing of the suppressors and food that also appeared.

Sunny yanked one of the arquebuses out of the gun locker and handed it over to Raiden. "If you want a gangbusting superweapon, this is the best I can get for you. It's a brand new replica, built in 2034. It works exactly like Snake's, but we handed that one back to Drebin."

"You gave it away?" Raiden asked.

"We loaned out all of Snake's gear, Jack." Sunny said. "Everything from the stun knife to the rail gun to the _Nomad_. The Drebins wanted to start a museum dedicated to remembering the War Economy so the world would never make the same mistake again, and 893 asked us to contribute. We did, and they provided the capital to start Otacon-Soul in return."

"That's… nice," Raiden disappointedly noted, handing the muzzleloader back. "Now we need those guns back—fast!"

"Yeah," she hesitantly concurred, "that ain't happening. Not unless we can go to the Dorin University in Texas, get what we need, and come back. Without a teleporter, we'd never make it in time, and the only working teleporters in the world I know of are the prototypes in that experimental village and castle in Japan."

Raiden was growing impatient. "Sunny," he said, "this isn't enough. A few muskets? Some semi-auto rifles? Swords, for God's sakes! This isn't New York! You—_we_—will be facing a Metal Gear tomorrow. Without even a rocket launcher, anything we throw at it will be useless!"

Sunny sighed, shaking her head. "Jack, you worry too much. You think I don't know how dangerous a REGINA is? I got ambushed by one of them in Saudi not too long ago. The design might be every bit as resilient as REX, but there's always a weak point. Hell, it only took me one grenade and one shot to kill it."

"How?" Raiden demanded. Even on his best day, he couldn't have taken out an IRVING with one shot. He'd heard stories of an ex-FROG killing a RAY with a single round, but Maria Cruz's shot was one in a million, a feat only she had been able to duplicate.

"Solar Gun charged shot," Sunny simply said. "I know how you and Snake always said to test experimental weapons before taking them into combat, but I figured I was in enough trouble with the ATF. I didn't need the FCC hounding my ass as well."

"A charged shot," Raiden repeated. "You managed turn the Solar Gun into a lethal weapon?"

"I did that years ago," dismissed Sunny. She absently tossed the Tanegashima back into the locker. "Changing frames or lenses on a second-generation or beyond Solar Gun—Gun del Sol, to be precise—is easier than changing barrels on an M-60. If you want something that can cool a beer, start fires, create a tornado, or blow up a city, it can do that."

"Show me," Raiden ordered.

An evil smile tugged at the corners of Sunny's lips. "I thought you'd never ask." Then, as quickly as it had come, the smile turned into a frown. "But we'll have to pick up the gang first; I think Yuri'll want to see this, too."

* * *

"You informed me the castle would be ready by March," the unhealthily-pallid blonde calmly muttered. "Now I receive word that your subcontractors won't accept the new terms."

"That's it in a nutshell, Ms. Porter," Tomlinson answered. "We're doing what we can to resolve the dispute, but the only native Spanish speakers we have on hand come from around here. Castilian Spanish is _just_ different enough that we can't risk doing a halfhearted translation, and their labor laws make ours look business-friendly."

"'Those who are not content with adequacy must beware the costs of perfection,'" Porter recited. "Your friend in Michigan told me that once. Perhaps this is a sign from God. I've been too focused on building a perfect replica to see what I already have. But I can't say I'm too happy with this development; it seems you've underestimated the union's strength."

"And how!" Tomlinson agreed. "I thought it was bad here. Europe makes America look like a cakewalk!"

Porter laughed at the remark, sounding more like an evil priestess who would slowly destroy her prey's world just to further her own goals than a mercenary in her mid-twenties. There was something sinister about that voice, and for a fleeting moment, Tomlinson thought she heard the younger woman's accent slipping.

"Ahem. While you're here," Tomlinson uneasily continued, "we might as well discuss a more… private matter."

"Yes?" Porter asked. "What is it?"

The ex-FROG walked over to the door and closed it. This was a very sensitive issue that was not meant to leave the room. "I know you're good at capturing and killing tangos. There's one who's practically immune to everything we throw at him."

"The infamous Charles Kinney," Porter supplied. "You've hired people to kill him before, yes?"

Again, Porter's accent slipped. There was something throaty about her pronunciation, and her choice of words was strange.

Then again, maybe Tomlinson was just getting old. Her fiftieth birthday _was_ coming up. "Yeah," she admitted, "and they all failed. Out of everyone, only Maria's come close. Charlie's damn near unstoppable, and we don't know why."

"He has a shield unit," reminded Porter. "Your agent gave him one."

"Charlie has a fake. I made sure of that myself." Tomlinson sighed, not wanting to ask such an absurd question. "Is there any kind of magic that can help us, Celia?"


	12. Dark Apostles

Only three months after the beginning of the Morris administration, a band of so-called patriots launched a bloody campaign in Armistead, Virginia's youngest county. Timed to coincide with the 258th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, its intention was to send a dual message to the UN to withdraw its peacekeepers from American soil and to establish the US as the sole and final authority on all Security Council resolutions.

A mob of insurgents fell upon the peacekeepers shortly before dawn that day, using their modified Metal Gear PRINCEPS to breach the base defenses. The perimeter guards fought back to no avail; in a matter of minutes, all had fallen, murdered by the bullets of a blood-crazed lynch mob. The blue-helmets soon found themselves beset on all sides by hundreds of heavily-armed Americans and unable to escape.

Militant officers, knowing the UN had been the aggressors in the battle, warned their enemies that only unconditional surrender would be accepted. Otherwise, they would leave no agent of the New World Order alive.

The blue-helmets responded with a full-scale counterattack. It was unthinkable; they were outnumbered, yet they managed to force even the elite 102nd Patriot Regiment to fall back, albeit at heavy cost to themselves. Rumor had it that a blue-helmet Gekko killed the PRINCEPS with one shot from its TOW launcher, believed at the time to be an exceptionally lucky shot.

The militants continued to fight after the destruction of their heavy support, but were forced on the defensive. With their supplies dwindling, they contemplated surrender, only to be overruled by an incompetent glory hound of a commander, General Gravlin. Defying his orders in secret, his command group broadcasted a distress call to all friendly forces within range.

Relief came in the form of a lone five-ton supply truck driven by a man calling himself Drebin 2012. The blond arms merchant singlehandedly cut a swath through the blue-helm lines to deliver a small quantity of medicines and ammo to the desperate militants, risking death every inch of the way. His supplies, though meager, were just enough to force a breakout through the gap he'd created, allowing a withdrawal to friendly territory.

Gravlin became the last casualty of the battle. As the narcissistic general threatened to have the Drebin shot for denying him his victory, a sniper put a bullet through the worthless officer's head.

No one knew who fired the .22 CB cap that left him brain-damaged and lingering on life support, but if anything, the assassin was a blessing in disguise. Only an idiot combat engineer who'd gotten his commission solely because he did four years at West Point would have decided that a piece of crap like the PRINCEPS was good for anyone other than the REMFs.

Maybe that was the retired Marine within him talking, Kinney thought. He had gotten out a generation ago, back when it still meant something to serve the country. But those days were over; the country he loved so dearly had been hijacked by doves, politicians, and traitors—three types of people who deserved to be shot, not given power—who rewarded the lazy poor and punished hardworking Americans. The world had been turned upside down, and hardly anyone gave a fuck.

At least Doc Nguyen still believed in the America of old. _He_ understood the value of hard work, hated commies with a passion, and, above all, was a fellow retired leatherneck. The vast majority of intellectuals were bleeding-heart socialists with their heads in the clouds, but Van Nguyen was a hardcore capitalist who wouldn't think twice about running over a band of tree huggers if they dared to interfere with free enterprise.

And God bless free enterprise, because Nguyen had managed to score one of the rarest war trophies in existence, a sanitized LAW tube actually used within the past year. The M72 rocket family had been largely phased out of the military years before; except for a select few units and possibly Mexico's legendary counternarcotics contractors, no one used them anymore. Sanitized tubes were almost nonexistent; a lack of markings just screamed "black ops" at anyone who got close enough to notice.

"It's definitely an -A7," Kinney said as he rotated the cylinder, taking in every detail of the prized launcher. "I don't think the Corps still uses them officially, but I know the Navy did up until Morris took power. If it had a serial number, I'd say it's for the EOD folks, but without it…"

"SEALs?" Nguyen finished, his fatigue easily helping suppress an urge to laugh. His role as a restaurant manager was over for the day, but he had yet to slip into his professor persona. The transition would have been easier if he were at his office, but one of his most regular customers was taking his sweet time inspecting a damned ad-hoc cooler.

"That's what I think," said Kinney. "I hope so, anyway. You've got a real keeper here, Doc. Colonel Clanton down in Alabama's offering three grand for one of these, but take my advice: Don't sell it to her. In fact, don't ever do business with her. She's in this for the money."

"Aren't we all?" replied Nguyen. "Charlie, as much as I value your input, I have classes to teach and articles to write. If we could continue this some other time…?"

"Hmm?" Kinney dumbly looked at the professor. It took a few seconds for comprehension to set in. "Oh, right." He relinquished the tube and stood up. "Well, I won't keep you. Good luck teaching kids about proper American capitalism."

"That I will," Nguyen said to the departing lawman. "See you soon."

The aging professor waited until Kinney was long gone before releasing a sigh of relief. It was a shame that any sheriff could believe in such conspiracies when he was blind to so many right under his nose, but anything that made killing that murderous bastard easier was good for the world.

Removing a pen and paper menu from his shirt pocket, Dr. Van Nguyen began scribbling a coded message to a certain former employee.

* * *

"_Those fucking politicians!_"

Tomlinson marched out of her office with her laptop case in her gloved right hand, a briefcase in her left, and a bulging rucksack on her back. She had to be carrying at least three hundred pounds of equipment, yet she moved as if it were weightless.

Trailing just behind her was Celia Porter, barely recognizable out of her armor. In her orange robes, she looked more like a cult priestess than a contractor. She carried little of her equipment herself, a perk of being a high-value client at DREBINS.

Keller saw his chance and decided to take it. "Ma'am," he said, trying to keep up with them, "if it's not too much trouble, I need—"

"Not now, Keller!" Tomlinson scolded. "Look, whatever you need, we can take care of later. Just fall in for now." Under her breath, she muttered, "Damn it, of all the stupid decisions they could've made, they pulled this on us!"

"At the worst possible time as well," Celia added. A PDA suddenly materialized in her hands. "I should cancel my plans for tonight. Next week?"

"No," said Tomlinson. "I'll be out of state then. End of September?"

Celia shook her head as she scrolled down. "I have business in Russia. We'll just have to revisit this some other time."

"Excuse me, ma'am, but what's this about?" Keller asked.

"Ah, it's some POLL bullshit," Tomlinson dismissed. "The President's refusing to evac to Camp David in case things heat up tomorrow, and Shepherd just ordered protection for DC's embassies. Fuck him."

"Shepherd?" echoed Celia. "Vice President Shepherd? Why would he call you for help? Surely your Washington branch is more than enough for his purposes."

"Nope," said Tomlinson. "Washington's got barely fifty Combat Support personnel right now. Our people are tied down at Virginia Beach and Quantico and so on and so forth. Every goddamned operator in the world wants FROG training, but most drop out before making it through the Tadpole stage." She stumbled and quickly recovered as she remembered a highly-important question. "Speaking of that, we ever refund the FBI for the class slots we gave over to the Japanese, Keller?"

"Uh, no," Keller answered. He quickly sidestepped the water cooler in his path. "Jesus, this place is cluttered! No, ma'am, HRT's too fucking pissed at us to take their money back. Either we accommodate them or they investigate us. We're trapped between a rock and a hard place, boss."

"Like hell we are," Tomlinson retorted, momentarily wrinkling her nose in response to the faint scent of coffee coming from an employee break room. "Celia, you came here with Esfahani and Zia, didn't you? I'll get Faze to stay in-country and teach for a few weeks. And watch your right; you got incoming."

"Colonel Zia seemed incredibly upset today," Celia warned, gracefully sliding to her left just as a sergeant carrying a sack of brass rounded a corner. "She was on the verge of tears when we assaulted Camp Bowman this morning."

"I'm not surprised," said Tomlinson. "Faze has issues with protecting civilian ingrates, and I can see why: Shepherd thinks guarding Washington—and not the crime-ridden streets, either, just the embassies—will earn us points with the rest of the world. As if! These other countries, they hated the US back when we were a real superpower, hated how we were always muscling our way into conflicts around the world—called it 'American imperialism,' too, _even when we weren't involved_.

"The last straw for us old FROGs was back in '16, when that damned artist in Rio posted the name, address, or photograph of every American he wanted dead. That was bad enough, but his terrorist buddies from the Middle East had to make his wishes come true. We got sent in to kill them all as part of our penance campaign. It took us until New Year's Eve before Maria sniped him, but the damage was done."

"The infamous Maria Cruz," Celia interrupted. "My understanding is that your team had Carlos under surveillance for nearly two weeks before his death. Why didn't she take the shot before then?"

"Sniping's not easy," said Tomlinson, "no matter how she makes it look. You need to get to and from your positions. Your aim has to be absolutely still so you don't accidentally nudge your rifle a hair too far and end up missing your target by a few dozen meters. And on and on… the short version is you have to be in top shape to be a sniper. Maria was pregnant at the time; I think she got knocked up around Thanksgiving that year."

"But her nanomachines," Celia pointed out, "they should have—"

Tomlinson shook her head. "FROG nanos back then didn't mix with womb-huggers. It fucks up the woman and leaves the kid with serious birth defects. Seriously, you ever see her son?"

"No," said Celia. She'd _wanted_ to meet him; he was a crucial part of her long-term plans. Unfortunately, he was rumored to be under surveillance by an intelligence agency—a highly-secretive, _religious_ intelligence agency at that—and even if he weren't, there was still the matter of his mother.

"I have, ma'am." Keller shuddered. "Kid's creepy as hell. It's like he wants to steal your soul, or at least stab you with that dull pocketknife he always has on him. Thank God the Gunner sent him away to Japan."

"Japan, you say?" Celia inquired, as if suddenly interested. In truth, she already knew he was in Japan; she just didn't know where to begin looking. This was perfect; all she needed was to ask one innocent little question, and she would be a major step closer to fulfilling her cult's goal. "Where in Japan?"

"Some place in Nagano—Hakuba, I think," guessed Tomlinson. "You wanna hear the rest of my story?"

There were no objections. "So anyway," she continued, "we pulled our troops out of all their countries, and when they finally wised up to just how much money our bases brought in, they demanded we stay... _after_ it was too late for us to turn around and unpack. They don't want us in their countries, they won't let us leave, and whenever there's a terrorist attack here, they're cheering and dancing out in their streets. Fucking vultures.

"That's why Faze always looks like she wants to kill everything," Tomlinson summarized. "All she sees is entitled sociopaths everywhere, living when they shouldn't be."

Thankfully, before the old FROG could truly launch into one of her usual tirades of hatred against smug anti-Western ingrates, the trio reached their destination. The sight of the thick metal doors and soundproof walls had never been so comforting to her companions.

* * *

Sunny opened her aging sedan's glove compartment, having completely cleared it out days before in case a pig decided she was an easy roust. She'd placed her necessary documentation in the door pocket; it made for easier access and she wouldn't have to use her right arm to pull out the papers out. Not only did her shoulder thank her, it meant she had her dominant hand available if she needed to defend herself.

"We'll only need one of these," she said, holding up a coin she'd gotten from her Japanese friend. "Be careful: If it lands on tails, it'll generate an electric blast capable of destroying a Gekko."

"_If_ it lands on tails," Raiden stressed. "That's obviously not the worst that could happen. What about heads?"

"Heads, everything we want dead disintegrates into dust, just like what happened with those holdouts in Israel." She tossed the coin into the compartment and shut it. "I only have ninety-nine of them, but that doesn't concern me much."

Raiden nodded slowly, unsure if Sunny fully understood that she was carrying items rightly feared throughout the world. Dozens of minor wars had been ended by the mere threat of their usage, and tens of millions of prisoners and refugees lay dead for refusing to obey _every_ order while under the custody of someone who possessed a few of the coins.

They were classified as weapons of mass destruction, but they were far worse than any conventional, nuclear, biological, or chemical device. At least the vast majority of weapons on the battlefield didn't discriminate among victims; these unassuming pieces of gold _did_.

There were legends that the coins were connected to the Patriots, or, at the very least, were demonic in nature. Vast stockpiles of the unassuming instruments of death, among other technologies, were recovered from the rubble of a Romanian castle following a battle during the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. As the conflict in nearby Kosovo had officially ended two months prior, the incident was classified for fear of reigniting hostilities in the region.

"Why did—" Raiden began, before stopping himself. He knew exactly _why_ Sunny had acquired the coins; h_ow_ she had gotten her hands on one, let alone ninety-nine, was the real question. From what he knew, Sunny's talents were in clandestine emplacement of materiel for procure on-site operatives, not bartering for WMDs and antique blades. "_How_ did you get them? These are even more hated than nukes."

"It's my pay." Sunny started the car. "Bear with me, because this is a long story: Our contacts in Japan want their blades and blunts improved. There's a little technique out there called solar forging. Right now, I'm one of the few people in the world who knows how it's done."

"Solar… _forging_," Raiden echoed. He'd heard it mentioned maybe ten years ago by Otacon, but thought nothing of it at the time.

"I know you're skeptical, but it works." Sunny checked her mirrors and looked over her shoulder as she backed out of the driveway. "It's not _that_ different from the regular process; just think of it as using solar energy instead. 'Course, there _are_ a _few_ differences: I've never heard of anyone crafting Gram by combining light and darkness under the old way."

"Of course not." Something clicked in Raiden's mind. It wasn't Balmung or Muramasa, but Gram was supposedly powerful enough to lob off the horn of an anvil, yet also sharp enough to split hairs. She'd turned a myth into reality?

"I know I suck at it, all right?" Sunny embarrassedly blurted as she threw the car into drive. "Just because Gram's a piece of junk compared to those 'Blessed Wind' swords doesn't mean it won't fetch a good price on the market. They're worth two thousand gold pieces each, just so you know."

It made sense for Sunny to be selling swords once Raiden remembered that she was heavily in debt. He soon understood her plan to get out of it. "You use that elephant gun I saw to create new casings that you sell. Then you use the money to buy cheap materials in bulk, which you use solar forging on to turn into legendary weapons.

"But you're not a master smith yet, so you need templates of the weapons. You pay for buying the templates by servicing some of your suppliers' weapons. Sometimes, you do such a good job that they give you pocket WMDs to make up for the difference. The weapons you make from the templates, you sell for gold. So where do you sell them _to_?"

"Uh, something like that," she stated. In truth, she'd zoned out somewhere after his second sentence. "I know some homies in San Miguel interested in 'em—the copies I make, I mean. But John's always the one negotiating, and he charges a commission."

"I figured as much," Raiden wearily admitted. "No one his age, making what he does, could've been able to afford a home like his." He paused for a moment before deciding to amend the statement. "Not many people in this day and age can afford homes, period."

* * *

"Twenty grand a trip, a trip a week," said Karnstein, watching the feed of numerous holograms being shot and sliced to pieces. She wiped her hands off on her clothes, having recently returned from stashing her brass in her storage locker. "Wow. And I thought my brother-in-law had it bad."

"How's that?" John asked. He sidestepped around a corner and took down a plumbob with his pistol before running for the end zone.

Karnstein confirmed the end of the level and began loading the next map. "Well, sir, you could've gotten twenty-eight on the open market. And your truck's a five-tonner; you should've been able to carry twice as many."

"I was at Armistead, Sarge. Even if I had space, breaking contact with five tons of materiel weighing you down is hard, so no, I can't." He noticed that the level still hadn't been loaded. "What's the hold-up?"

"Something's hogging the bandwidth," Karnstein answered. "Hang on, sir, I'll close down and refresh."

"Nah, skip the refresh," ordered John, "just exit. Calibration's as good as it'll get. It doesn't have to be perfect." He removed his helmet and mopped the sweat from his forehead. "I don't know how you people don't burn up in power suits! Two hours in an exoskeleton, and I'm sweating like a pig!"

Karnstein laughed. "I'm not sure how anyone passes the Warrant Officers' Exam, so we're even." She pressed the key combination to begin the long shutdown sequence for the VR program. "What's the pass rate, forty-five percent?"

"When Keller took it, maybe," guessed John. "They're serious when they say the person on your right is gonna fail. When _I_ took it, the guys on my right _and_ left failed. Only thirty-seven percent made it. I've heard it's gotten even worse since Morris repealed the NFA last year."

"Oy." Karnstein's pale face lost its remaining color before mouthing a curse in her ancestors' tongue. She then remembered the redeeming quality about the test. "At least I'll have unlimited attempts."

"Actually," John corrected, inadvertently crushing her hopes, "you can't afford to fail it. It's like a bar exam: The proportion of people who pass it the second time around is lower than the ones who've never taken it before. It's meant to judge if you got it in training. Trust me, the warrant's not worth it: Being a warrant officer's like taking on a lieutenant's responsibilities with a sergeant's pay and a private's chances of getting blamed. We spend every day trying to get promoted out of our ranks for good reason."

"So I don't have a chance in hell." Karnstein covered her eyes with a hand and shook her head. "Damn it. At this rate, I should just go full officer."

* * *

They could have projected a 3D holographic map instead, but the longhaired general was old-fashioned and didn't want to be reminded of _Outer Haven_'s command center, having had to order many of her comrades to their deaths at the hands of the Snake, Mantis, and those two Rat Patrol operators. It was also unethical to put a strain on the company's servers when maps from a giant search engine would suffice.

Shayda Esfahani took a stylus and circled the section of the I-5 where Oregon and California met. "According to the Gunner, opposition remnants in the West Coast are encircled and being picked off at the border. By this time next week, every last terr will either be dead or interned in Arizona. Where's the Midwest army?"

"What Midwest army?" Faiza used her own stylus to mark where the enemy force had met its end. She then gave the center of the rough oval a poke. "Tanegashima barrage took out the main body before they made it out of Illinois. The survivors are being shot for treason as we speak. Fuckers deserved to be skinned alive and fried in pig fat instead."

"Right. Except for the East Coast, the opposition's advance has been halted." Shayda crossed out a number of unit emblems. "Their Phase One is effectively a failure. Washington?"

Faiza shook her head. "It's crazy: Their heavies are pulling out. I… I don't get it."

"So little concern for such a major target," Shayda mused. "Why would they willingly—"

She didn't have a chance to finish the thought. The metal doors hissed as they slid open, causing her to forget. Her hopes of retaining the remnants were subsequently quashed as Outer Haven's senior surviving officer entered the room.

"Ladies and Keller," Tomlinson addressed, "take your seats. We got our work cut out for us."

* * *

The rubble of a think tank was finally being removed years after a vengeful young woman shelled its offices with homemade mortars and incendiaries. In time, a new office park would be built, but it would _not_ belong to an organization dedicated to perpetuating fear and hatred in the name of national pride or security.

Untold numbers of ultra-hawkish veterans had once operated in that building, advocating reactionary economic, military, and social policies in the name of restoring America's "security" and "former glory." To further damn themselves, their collaborators in several state governments attempted to torture and murder citizens who resisted the implementation of those policies.

Then they made a fatal error, targeting a scientist who did more good for the world in a second than they ever would in their lives. Then again, an inanimate _rock_ did more good in an instant than they would ever do in their lives, for those veterans only caused harm.

They thought it would be wise to accuse Hal Emmerich of terrorism for cofounding Philanthropy, of treason for working for a global ceasefire that damaged America's prestige, and of child abuse for being an unmarried man raising a girl. In their hubris, they never thought abducting him to their headquarters and torturing him for a "confession" of his "crimes" would bring the apocalypse down on them.

It took Sunny less than an hour to plan, practice, and break Otacon out of captivity. Armed only with two Stealth Camo units, a Ruger Single Six, and a P-38 can opener, she liberated her uncle from under the noses of his captors. Showing enormous self-restraint, she decided to leave the body count at zero during both the infiltration and exfiltration of the facility.

Once Otacon was safe, she prepared to retaliate against the fools who had crossed her family. Despite an ungodly college workload, Sunny found time over the following days to convert more than a dozen old propane tanks into IRA-style barrack busters and utilize them against the poor saps holed up within the building. She crafted a round for each tube before arranging the weapons in a circle around her intended target and timing them to fire for maximum effect.

Her first mortar detonated on the roof of the structure, causing the occupants within to start evacuating once they realized they were under attack. Rounds two through four struck successively lower levels, further weakening the building and dissuading return fire. The fifth bomb missed, as did the sixth, seventh, ninth, tenth, and eleventh, but the eighth landed in a crowd of evacuees, accounting for at least five hostiles killed and wounding several more.

The last two known barrack busters misfired. Tube 12 was later found in the possession of an individual who had previously called for patriots to "vote from the rooftops" against elected officials. Though missing its projectile, the weapon was identified as being of the same type as the ones used in the terrorist attack. Tube 13 was never recovered; its hundred kilogram bomb exploded days later.

A small group of executives survived the bombardment, having abandoned their colleagues to the mortars. As that act constituted breaking faith with the tradition of the US military of leaving none of their own behind, they marked themselves for burning in the eyes of their attacker, who launched napalm and white phosphorus rockets into their group.

Those who cheated death a second time soon wished that they had not. Through the smoke, flames, and screams, they heard the faint voice of a woman. She was everywhere and nowhere at once, a ghost among walking corpses. This woman read a list of charges against them, and after finishing, demanded that they enter a plea. When they remained silent, she blasted them with a tornado of glass sand, slowly skinning alive all but one.

The think tank's founder, the sole survivor, was singled out to suffer the worst of Sunny's attentions: Before torturing him, she shot him with several darts full of nanomachines to keep him eternally conscious, in extreme pain, and, worst of all, immortal. He was left blind, deaf, armless, legless, castrated, skinned, and burned after she and her axe were done with him. The better part of a decade had passed since then, and the man was still alive, languishing in a hospital that refused to cut off his life support or inject him with nanomachine suppressors because of its code of ethics.

So much for denouncing Philanthropy! No one who valued his or her continued existence _ever_ attacked Otacon after that. Hundreds of warmongers and other ne'er-do-wells tried to kill his adopted niece, though, and her kill count reflected that little fact.

On the rooftop of an abandoned building two blocks away from the hill of rubble, Raiden watched as the murderer of those hawks fixed a grenade to her Solar Gun. If he was right, it was one of the most useful reconnaissance tools in the world, highly coveted by militaries for its utility in revealing traps like IEDs and weak points in objects.

He raised a brow at her. "A Scan grenade? Impressive."

Sunny shrugged in response. "Homies in San Miguel got something better now. They surplussed their stock to me. Could you believe there's a nut out there—as in the kind you eat—that can do the same as these grenades? Even better, they're not habit-forming… unless you like the taste and texture, which you almost certainly will." She handed him the weapon. "Care to do the honors?"

"Certainly," said Raiden. He took the Solar Gun and unsuccessfully tried to launch the grenade. Dumbfounded, he tried again and again, achieving the same result. "It's not working."

"That's strange," Sunny commented. A reason presented itself to her. "Oh, I get it: Your blood's artificial. No wonder. I need to make a few tweaks." She retrieved the Solar Gun and held it for a few seconds before handing it to Raiden once again. "Okay, try it now."

Raiden pointed the gun in the air and launched the grenade. Once it exploded, several dozen small dots, warning signs, and arrows appeared in his vision. There was a small wad of money hidden in the wall of a nearby structure, most likely a hobo's stash. A tin can in a trashy vacant lot was stuffed with methamphetamine tablets, almost certainly waiting to be picked up by a drug trafficker. The mound of dirt next to it wasn't as innocuous as it looked; it was a disguised mine.

"There's a reason why we're here," Sunny explained, "and you just saw it. The people my gang fights are drug-dealing assholes who'll stop at nothing to make their paradise a reality. Well, their paradise is our hell, and we'll be damned if we let them succeed. Doesn't matter if it's meth or crack or horse or pity; they sling it, we whack 'em for it."

"Pity?" Raiden asked.

"PTV," said Sunny. "I'd never heard of it either until I took that line management job in South Ashfield. It's a hallucinogenic originally abused only in the Toluca Lake area up in Maine. Since then, it's spread all the way down to Florida.

"Anyway, we're here instead of at the meeting site because we got time to kill and I need to run a diagnostic on my gun. Plus, our targets for the trap are scheduled to arrive soon. If you don't mind?"

"Hmm? Oh, right." Raiden returned the Solar Gun to Sunny, still puzzled by her actions. They were supposed to be heading for a rendezvous with her allies, but they'd stopped for… what, exactly? To see if her gun worked? To zero it during a combat situation? She had to be out of her mind, he decided.

"Excellent," said Sunny. "Now watch closely: Any second now, there's gonna be a bunch of tattooed assholes from a power group pulling into the lot. One of 'em's gonna get out, go to the can, and pull a bag full of meth tabs from it. When he does, he'll cause the wires to connect and create a complete circuit. Boom."

As she finished speaking, a gunmetal SUV pulled up and a muscled man covered in tattoos stepped out. He sprinted to the can, reached in, and extracted a zip-lock bag containing a few dozen pills. By accident, he knocked the can over, allowing the end of the broken ice cream stick it was crushing to fall. The wire glued to the underside of the stick made contact with the wire buried in the ground, completing a circuit.

It was a crude but effective IED Sunny had constructed: A hail of supersonic rocks erupted from the disguised mine and shredded the tattooed man. Nothing remained of him but chunks of gore.

"Damn," Sunny nonchalantly cursed, "I used too many obsidian shards." She slowly rose to her feet and began charging her Solar Gun. "I'm gonna take out their vehicle now. One round, one percent power, Earth lens, cross on their gas tank. Firing."

A giant green ball of energy flashed out of the Solar Gun and homed in on the SUV's fuel tank. It struck the white Iron Cross painted there dead center, ignited the gasoline before exiting through the other side, and skimmed across the vacant lot before finally disappearing at Sunny's command. The vehicle exploded with the force of twenty-six sticks of dynamite an instant later, incinerating the occupants.

Sunny was disappointed, saying, "Motherfuckers had eight gallons of subpar gas in there, the cheapskates." She did not elaborate whether she was speaking from experience or out of habit, but her history and tone all but confirmed the former.

Even to one who had survived Liberia, Arsenal Gear, and hundreds of horrors since, the world could still find ways to surprise Raiden. "That was one percent?"

"One percent of the _whole battery's_ power," Sunny clarified. "In theory, anyway. I had to deactivate a lot of safeguards to fire it at that strength. What you saw was a fizzle; this gun is equipped with an Infinite battery. But hey, look at what else it did!" She pointed at the vacant lot.

Raiden looked in the direction and blinked several times to confirm what he was seeing. If it weren't for Sunny's words, he never would have believed that the lot, a brown piece of land filled with dead weeds, had suddenly become a lush garden of flowers, grass, and saplings. It appeared that the gun could heal as well as kill.

"Come on, Jack," said Sunny, patting him on a shoulder, "we're done here. There's still a lot of time left before we meet with the OGs, but I want to get there early."

* * *

"Let me handle this, ladies," Tomlinson requested of her battle-sisters. "No offense, but the last thing we need is a miscommunication with these people."

Faiza shrugged. "You're in charge around here."

"Too tired to care," added Shayda. "I'm not terribly fond of negotiations; at the end of the day, it's just another mission."

Keller and Celia said nothing. This was far above Keller's authority, and Celia was no Drebin. They were there simply because it was more time-efficient to have them there after the briefing.

Of the five people in the room, Tomlinson was the only one on her feet, pacing back and forth in the secure conference room as they waited for their Washington counterparts to pick up. Keller hadn't presented his request to her yet, and while no one was getting any work done, he didn't want to break his boss' train of thought. Still, he noticed that it was taking too long to establish a connection, like someone had set the VR simulator to record and stream. It had to be Karnstein at the controls; back in Michigan, she loved watching people go through the run-and-gun levels.

After several minutes, the giant screen in front of them flickered to life, revealing a group of two men and two women seated in a semicircle. All four looked every bit as sharp as Tomlinson; in other words, they'd looked better.

The second person from the left cleared his throat. A serious-faced man with grayish-blond hair, he was one of the most powerful men on the planet. Over the last thirty months, he had played a part in the deaths of over seven million armed militants and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians around the world, to say nothing of millions of not-so-innocent authoritarians and religious extremists. "Good to see you again, Colonel," he greeted. "You look like hell."

"Likewise, Mr. President," Tomlinson said. "I understand you're not changing your mind?"

"That's right," President Morris confirmed. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We can't allow Washington to fall, especially with this new development."

"Order?" asked Tomlinson. No one on her side understood her question, which suited her just fine; the fewer friendlies involved in this matter, the better.

The brown-haired man seated to the President's left nodded. While the look in his eyes marked him as a seasoned combat veteran, Tomlinson knew that the only combat he'd seen recently was in his—_their_—hometown. If anything, that made her respect him even more. "Affirmative, Lori," Vice President Shepherd stated, "we verified HOTS establishment not two hours ago. They're planning to make a push and use the fucking protests as cover."

_Not good_. Tomlinson closed her eyes for a moment and nodded. If, after all these years, they had regrouped and were headed for Washington, then there was no doubt of their intentions. This was a true offensive, and if a few agents had infiltrated the demonstrators' ranks, then the protests tomorrow either had to be handled with a velvet glove or an iron fist. Based on the presence of Shayda and Faiza, she already knew which course of action Morris and Shepherd had chosen.

The dyed-blonde woman sitting to the President's right stared at the ex-FROG and sized her up instantly. "There's no other way, no," the First Lady said. It seemed her talent at answering questions before they were formed as sharp as ever. "We don't negotiate with mental cases like these, Colonel, not when we know exactly what they're capable of. They could've stayed in their little dream world as long as they hurt no one, but they can't run from the consequences after what they've done."

"You sound like the Glen's bitch-ass judge," Tomlinson commented, forgetting the fourth member of the other party. "No offense, Elle."

The last of the Washington group's people showed little reaction to the insult to her mother. "None taken," the Second Lady dismissed. She looked at her husband. "She deserved what Alex did to her." Her hand moved to clench the locket she wore.

"Yeah," Shepherd agreed. He fell silent for a second, as if remembering an old wound. "Lori, we want your people to only protect the embassies for a good reason: We don't want to risk any more of your lives than necessary. Have you seen the weather forecasts for DC tomorrow?"

"Of course I have," said Tomlinson. "It's supposed to be foggy. I know what it means—"

"_She_ is only one woman," the First Lady interrupted, countering what Tomlinson was thinking. "I can't guarantee she'll be there to support you tomorrow. She'll have her hands full with fighting elsewhere."

President Morris decided it was time to wind up the call. "We can brief you further after you get here." He glanced in his wife's direction. "Cher's predicted heavy traffic this evening. Are you driving or flying to us?"

"Both," Tomlinson answered. "Advance teams are flying in by helos. They should be in DC by this evening. I'll have some of their heavy equipment airlifted to Dulles as well. Our armored units, on the other hand…"

"No problem," said the President. "I'll try to call in a favor from some old friends just in case it comes to that. See you in Hell tomorrow, Colonel. God knows we've been here long enough. Bye." He tapped a button, ending the communication.

Tomlinson stood motionless for a few seconds. Then, she found a chair and collapsed into it. "Well, that went well." She turned to Keller. "All right, Keller, what've you got for me?"

It took a few seconds for Keller to get over his shock. "Uh, just a leave request for the end of next April," he said, producing a sheet of paper. "and a few days in May. Going up to New York."

"Ah, the Big Apple. Been up there a few times myself," Tomlinson mentioned. She took the white sheet and signed it. "So has Al. Fun place, even if it's a magnet for assholes and Marines."

"_Nunquam fidelis_," Shayda piped in, "eh, Lori?"

* * *

The armistice throughout the Middle East was arbitrated by the unstoppable Lady of Toluca Lake, hired by the Morris administration to "twist a few arms." A fearsome young woman, her enemies considered her lightning rifle, unlimited ammo submachine guns, flamethrower, laser pistol, and power armor to be less dangerous than her eyes, which purportedly could shoot homing beams of light. In any case, few were brave enough to stand against the angel-faced blonde after she was accused of causing the mass suicide of hundreds of thousands of extremists with a single broadcasted command.

The last time Kinney checked, she was in Pennsylvania, working as a contractor for that state's branch of Cartland and Mason Investigations, Inc. While she was even deadlier than those Mantis freaks Snake fought, she was far lazier; she'd ordered her enemies to kill themselves because she wanted to go home early. As long as she stayed up north, he was safe.

Armistead County's longest-surviving lawman had his thoughts interrupted as he sensed someone at his office's door. Glancing up from the files on his desk, he saw a militiaman from one of the rear-echelon units preparing to knock on the doorframe.

"Oh, for the love of…" Kinney cursed. He resumed perusing the files in front of him, but something in the back of his mind bothered him. Just as quickly, he dismissed those concerns, figuring he'd left his door open. "Cluster?"

"Five seventy-third," the militiaman recited by rote. "We've volunteered to—"

"Reinforce this area." finished Kinney. "Just like the thousands before you. Report to Deputy Bright so he can fill out the paperwork. Filled out your will yet, son?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then welcome to Armistead. Mind the IEDs. Dismissed." He soon realized he hadn't heard the other man leave. "I said, 'dismissed,' soldier. That means get lost." The door creaked open, and Kinney felt relieved at the sound of footsteps.

Footsteps coming _in_, as it turned out. "Uh, sir?" a new voice asked.

Kinney looked up and saw the hulking form of Deputy Bright at the door. "What the fuck?" the sheriff began. "Bright, what are you doing here? You saw the FNG; you know what you gotta do."

"What FNG, sir?"

"The guy in the MARPAT uniform!" Kinney angrily clarified. Were all of these deputized infantrymen so clueless and irresponsible? As much as he hated specialized desk jockeys, he had to admit they were competent at their jobs, which freed warriors like Bright to serve on the front lines. "The rep from the 573rd!"

"The 573rd?" Bright swallowed a lump in his throat. "Sheriff, I just got off the phone with Galaxy. The 573rd's dead. All of them."

"What?" Kinney sat up straight in an instant. "How?"

"We dunno, sir. Info hasn't been relayed out of the Quiet Zone yet."

"Then what _do_ we know?"

"It sounded like the 573rd went down fighting. Their camp was full of spent shells and broken weapons when allied units arrived." Bright paused to gather his will. "Every last one of the 573rd was ripped apart by something no one can ID."

_Not likely,_ Kinney told himself. He may not have known _exactly_ what destroyed the 573rd, but he knew what could have, and that was enough. While the loss of an entire elite cluster/regiment was a major setback, it meant he had a fix on the Lady's whereabouts. Only she would—or _could_—have summoned such horrors out of the fog, and if she was at the 573rd's camp, it meant she was in _West_ Virginia. The bitch had come down at last, but thank God she was a state off.

"Galaxy's called for units slated for DC, Richmond, Norfolk, and a lot of others to be pulled," Bright continued. "Sir, without them—"

"We won't be able to take the depots," finished Kinney. "I know, damn it." He then remembered how the conversation had begun and the question he had to ask. "Wait one. Bright, before you came in, was the door opened or closed?"

"Closed, sir," answered Bright. "Then you said I should be taking care of the FNG. But there wasn't anyone else in here, and I haven't seen anyone in this entire station wearing MARPAT."

Kinney was speechless. The office was situated at the end of a long, narrow hallway. Thick armored doors protected the room from breaching attempts in case of a siege, and they did _not_ open or close quietly. Even if they were dealing with a stealth camouflage-equipped intruder, the old flooring creaked; there was no way anyone could have entered or left his office without making a sound. Finally, the mystery man claimed to be from a unit that had been KIA.

If Kinney wasn't hallucinating, then his station was haunted by ghosts.

* * *

In the US, a man could bomb a school full of civilians and be hailed a hero. He could fly a plane into a government building—especially an IRS building—and become a martyr to millions. He could gun down dozens of campers and have his supporters claim that _he_ was the true victim by being punished for doing what was necessary to keep the country from falling to evil. He could even drive an up-armored vehicle, devastate a town, and inspire copycats thirty years later.

Or, not content with small-time terrorism, he could just preach his hate from the pulpit on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Sticks and stones might break bones, but the words of the powerful could start massacres.

Celia tried to pay more attention to Pastor Jones' final sermon, broadcast a week after his untimely death in Japan, than she did to the three ex-FROGs a few tables away as they planned their strategy for tomorrow. What they did should have been none of her concern; she wasn't going with them to Washington, but to Richmond. Still, they could've kept their voices down; she had needed to rewind the video multiple times to make sense of the poor-quality audio, and their conversation was breaking her concentration. Despite all efforts to ignore them, she found herself eavesdropping on their plans.

"I still have some of the coins we used to evict colonists from the Jordan River." Shayda reached into a pouch and retrieved a few of the items in question. "We duplicate several hundred, fit them into a frag sleeve, and fire a cruise missile at the Mall."

_Sounds familiar_, Celia told herself. It was a variant of one of Esfahani's favorite tactics, one she'd taught her gang allies: To minimize the risk to her own forces, she cordoned off a target and bombarded it with area-of-effect munitions. If necessary, she would send in an assault team—preferably in power armor—afterwards to finish off the survivors.

Tomlinson shook her head. "We may as well drop a nuke. Those coins aren't covered by any arms treaty… yet, but there's no fucking way Morris would let us use WMDs to massacre American citizens—yeah, I know they're traitors, but they're still citizens."

"Morris isn't running for reelection," reminded Faiza.

"He isn't, but Washington is a loyalist city," said Tomlinson. "If the rest of the world sees us resorting to magic coins and—and, oh, I don't know, room-clearing _hexagrams_ to break up protests, how do you suppose they'll react?"

"We'd be killing Americans," Shayda stated. "The rest of world would point and laugh if they weren't cheering. They need a common enemy and, sad to say, you Yanks were wonderful at being just that in the twenties."

_Interesting_, thought Celia. Her cult used similar reasoning to justify its existence: For God to be good, there had to be evil; therefore, she sought to create a dark lord for the world to hate so the masses would flock to God. But this—defame an innocent enough, and he or she would no longer be perceived as innocent, regardless of facts—provided her with an idea of how to create such an enemy of the world. After all, the truth does not matter, only believability—or would those who called "bullshit" on that statement at least admit that the soldier who murdered her family said exactly that?

"The answer's still no," Tomlinson said. "Faze, what about you? Any ideas?"

Faiza shrugged. "Go in weapons hot. It worked in Karachi."

_Ah, yes, Karachi_. Celia quivered at the mention of the incident. Faiza Zia's escape from her hometown was the stuff of legends; the rampage was studied extensively by militaries around the world as the ultimate lesson in urban warfare.

"Faze has a point," Shayda agreed. "Only one plan has ever survived repeated contact with the enemy, and that's 'kill every wanker you see; fuck the details.'"

Celia immediately stopped what she was doing. _No plan?_ That sounded exactly like what her target would do—he'd probably storm her cult's base in the middle of the night with nothing but a pocketknife and a trench coat—and here, the most successful Combat Support officer in DREBINS was advocating exactly that. Was she _insane_?

"Yep," Tomlinson conceded. "We have a plan, then. Not a good one, but the best we can do under our constraints. Let none escape our justice; let none survive our wrath."

"They'll get theirs," the three officers promised in unison.

* * *

"You've been asking a lot of questions lately," Sunny remarked, "but to answer your last, yeah, our base is right here." She pointed to the ground.

"This place… the NRAO first recorded that strange solar interference here." At once, Raiden realized what could have caused those emissions, and if the parking lot was large enough to set up four of them in a square, then it had to be ground zero. "Wait, you don't mean—you're kidding me!"

"I only wish I were," said Sunny.

They were just across the street from Lewis Armistead University, standing in the overflowing parking lot of a popular diner where Sunny had found her first outside job. One of the cooks taking a break had personally directed them to park in a space normally reserved for employees, shareholders, and suppliers before heading back inside, most likely to inform the gangsters that one of their OGs had arrived.

"Yeah," Sunny continued, "there's no way to conceal Pile Driver and Solar Station emissions. It cost us a shitload of money to set up here, and now I can't even call them up because of all the cars." She beckoned for him to follow her. "Come on, Jack. I need to get you cleared with the other OGs before they let you observe our briefing."

Raiden shook his head as he followed. "When the hell did I die and go to Wai Wai World?" he muttered under his breath.

"Probably after the last time your body got destroyed," Sunny joked. She held the door open for him.

It was a Monday afternoon just outside a private university. Classes had begun two weeks before. The diner was run by a professor who had kept it alive and growing for years when most small businesses failed within one. Military-strength coffee and tea were sold within, as was fast food. If the parking lot was too subtle a clue of how packed the establishment would be, then not even seeing the crowd within would be obvious enough. It was a perfect time and place for conducting a clandestine gang meeting.

Somehow, they were noticed almost immediately by the blue-haired hostess. "Oh, hi, Sunny," she greeted them. "Party of two? We're a little short on seats right now. Would you be all right with eating in the back?"

"Sure," said Sunny, "and can I get a menu?"

"We're short on those, too," the hostess replied, winking. "Oh! We have a paper one available, but someone wrote on it."

Sunny nodded. "That's fine with me."

"Right this way, please," the hostess requested. She beckoned for them to follow her through the bustling diner.

Once they were out of earshot of the other patrons, Sunny asked, "What's your sitrep?"

"He survived," the hostess answered, "as you already know. No one's been able to figure out how, but the Tomahawk didn't explode until after he was out of danger. He showed up here right when we were opening and ordered five jumbo cheeseburgers and a large coffee." She handed Sunny the menu she'd requested. "I haven't read it yet; a lot of those guys from the west have been showing up this afternoon, but the Doc's got new intel on one of Alabama's commanders."

"Largest order since I worked here," commented Sunny. "Adjusting for the taste factor, he's almost as spooked as after his family got whacked." She glanced at Raiden and explained, "The sheriff around here, Kinney? You remember him from the _Missouri_, right? He's turned into a typical jackbooted thug."

"A JBT with an eating disorder," added their hostess. "Oh, and Sunny? Yuri went ahead and called for a giant trail mix cake to be delivered to your meeting; it should be ready in a few minutes. Whatever you do, _don't_ leave any leftovers for us regular grunts, _please_. We're begging you." She waved them to a private booth before parting ways with them.

"You're the one killing all the _Missouri_ Marines," Raiden said to Sunny as they sat down. The room raised red flags in his mind; the floor felt like it would transport them to another dimension at any moment. Something about the emerald panel behind him seemed off; he could sense a presence behind—no, _within_—it, impossible though it may have sounded.

"Problem?" she asked in response.

"No, not really," Raiden confessed. "Sometimes, I wish more people would understand that being a veteran doesn't automatically make you a saint for the rest of your life. The Marines from that day, they let it go their heads. They took away all the wrong lessons." He shook his head and scoffed. "Nothing works well at extremes."

"Good, because I'm not the one killing those fools," said Sunny. She began skimming through her menu. "It's not just one former Haven Trooper with a chip on her shoulder, either. I've tracked down the Marines on the crew manifest provided by the Admiral; with a few exceptions, damn near every last jarhead on the _Missouri_ who fought the FROGs lived a life of assholery after being discharged. You remember Ralph Vandenburgh, right?"

"Vandenburgh," Raiden echoed. "No, can't say I do. Which one was he?"

"Vandenburgh was a lance corporal who got out the hell out right after the battle with the _Haven_ and moved here to be with his family." She placed an index finger on one of written marks and mouthed a word to herself before resuming her explanation. "He joined up as a second lieutenant because his wife lost one of her brothers at Armistead. Any of this ringing a bell?"

"Uh-uh. Killed too many of those types to remember."

"He was a purchasing agent and propaganda officer for a lot of cells," Sunny continued, "and he was the OIC of a meth lab 'round these parts until it was taken out on the first of this month."

"Still nothing."

"John infiltrated the militias because of his wife."

Finally, Raiden recognized him. "Ah, I think I remember now. He was an armorer like Kinney." He shook his head. "Too damned proud for his own good. I'm surprised it took this long to kill him."

"Yeah, that's the one," Sunny confirmed. She refolded the menu. "Say, Jack, do you believe in magic?"

_Strange question_, Raiden told himself. To her, he said, "Even though I don't, I know better than to immediately reject anything that doesn't make sense. Consider nothing to be true. Believe everything to be possible. I question everything, especially when you're involved. Why do you ask?"

"You've obviously noticed some things off with this place," answered Sunny, "like the floor, the Otenko panel behind you, Yuri standing in the corner while he waits for the cream of blue mushroom soup he ate to wear off—"

"Hey!" someone protested. The next instant, a tall, muscled man materialized next to their table. His black suit, starched white shirt, and clean-shaven face seemed at odds with his long, messy blond hair, but there was no mistaking him for anyone other than the infamous man in question. "For your information," he corrected, "it was a portobello and blueshroom quad cheeseburger. You've lost your touch, Gurlukovich. The Sun will rise again."

"We follow it. We keep it always in our hearts. Nice to see you too, Yuri," said Sunny. "Anyone else coming?"

"They'll be there soon enough," Yuri responded, "or maybe they've already gone ahead. I don't know; I'm just waiting for the cake." He turned to Raiden. "And you, sir, you must be John's father. Your reputation precedes you."

* * *

"And I still say its science," said John. "Keller, I know out of all the months your team's been down here, I've only worked with you for the past two weeks. I don't know how schools are up in Detroit—"

"They're shitty," Karnstein interjected. She brushed past Keller and set down the empty cardboard box she was carrying. "Got some medkits on the way—back in two minutes." With that, she turned away from the two men to load other vehicles.

"—but nothing is magic," John continued. "I believe in solar-based weapons. I believe in magical tickets that turn into food or teleport you somewhere safe. I believe in resurrection drugs, so I also believe in the undead. I believe in all the psychic powers that can exist, and I believe in Princess Heart. I even believe Tomlinson's hometown up in Maine is haunted with homeboys wearing black pyramid masks. I do _not_ believe in magic."

"How's that work, John-boy?" asked Keller. "You believe in all these fantasies—and some are _way_ out there—but you don't believe in magic." He turned his head and spotted some of his men loading a rail gun into a truck. "Hey, guys," he called to them, "rails go on the pintles!"

"Not this one, sir!" one of them called back. "This one's for the security team! We're moving it to the helos!"

"Carry on, then!" Keller ordered. He turned back to John to reiterate his question. "Why don't you believe in magic, John-boy?"

"The scientific method, Keller," John explained. "Once scientists get involved, magic becomes science. Even if they don't find out how something works, they find how it _doesn't_. 'Magic' is just a way of saying, 'we don't know, we don't want to know, but we see it.'" He took a black marker and wrote a number on the cardboard box. "I'll thank you not to call my beliefs 'fantasies,' too, because I've played bait in enough studies already. No way am I _ever_ setting foot in Istrakan again." As an afterthought, he added, "And the proper term for magical energy is 'mana.'"

"You were in the Istrakan War, sir?" Karnstein asked, carrying a pair of first aid kits by their handles. "I was, too. Remember the time when the Earthly Maiden and Doomy partnered up to collect on all of San Miguel's war debts?"

"Oh, yeah, I remember," recalled John. "Drebin 893 dragged me along to set up a foothold there. He never mentioned I'd have to pay the entire town's debts if we wanted the right to establish ourselves there."

"Wait, how's that work?" Keller interrupted.

Karnstein handed the kits off to John. "Their creditor—the one Doomy took over? I can't remember the old name."

"Dark Loans," John supplied.

"Dark Loans was charging eight hundred percent interest a _day_," continued Karnstein. "They got away with it because the S&L industry in San Miguel was totally unregulated before DREBINS showed up. If you took out a loan with them, you had three days to pay it off with your funds in the Solar Bank, the only bank in town. If you couldn't, it was off to the Punishment Room for you."

"Where you had to work off what you owed," finished John. He placed the kits into the cardboard box before sealing it off with tape. "San Miguel gave us their land. In exchange, we assumed the town's debts. Problem was, we only had dollars, euros, and the rest of the hard currencies. They wanted something else."

"Nothing unusual, then," said Keller. "What they make you do, John-boy?"

"They don't call me 'Running Boy' over there for nothing. Since 893 outranked me, I had to be the one to run on that treadmill." John shrugged. "Hey, if it's good enough for Django to be the Solar Boy, I can take being their living saint of debtors. _Anything's_ better than Lita when she's mad."

* * *

"How was San Miguel?" Sunny asked.

"Same as usual," Yuri answered as he cracked open a large book. "Violet forgot about the Tonnairs she stashed in one of her coffins. It's pouring like mad over there. Master What's-His-Nose has asked you to come around to do what you can. On the other hand, your new Sol de Vices arrived this morning—I had them delivered to the Dorin University's museum. They shipped it to the ranch from there."

"Find the command yet?"

"Gimme a sec. There's nothing here about transporting a cake the size of this table."

Raiden had been following the conversation to the best of his ability, but the legendary cyborg scout and New York superhero's mind was having trouble processing the information. Even assuming San Miguel was in Texas, Fernandez had flown halfway across the country, taken possession of whatever these "Sol de Vices" were, delivered them to Dorin, and flown back in under twelve hours.

The problem with those assumptions was that the Dorin University in Texas was nowhere near an airport, unlike the one in Louisiana. The college's professors had insisted on locating their school in the middle of nowhere so they could research in peace and not endanger the public. They had earned their continued solitude many times over, as their efforts had produced many wondrous technologies, including the teleporters that were being trialed in Japan.

Even if Fernandez could have flown the Sol de Vices—strange how it sounded like "device," Raiden noted—to the nearest airport and switched to a helicopter for the rest of the ride, he still would have had to wait as the college took its time filling out the necessary forms. Fernandez simply couldn't have made the run between these private DREBINS-owned schools.

_No_, Raiden realized, _he could have_. He should have noticed it earlier; they were sitting on top of the means. It was ingenious of them to provide so many suspicious details for him to notice; they'd concealed many more right under his nose.

Fernandez had greeted Sunny with a line only a word off from "the _South_ will rise again." Any outsider listening to them could reasonably assume that he had a slip of the tongue, substituting his friend's name for what he had intended to say. Sunny had deliberately used the word "_it_" in her response, furthering the impression that he had misspoken and that she hadn't caught it.

Except there was no mistake. Their gang followed the sun, as in they were active after the sun had set and darkness had fallen, just like outside. None of their OGs had ever been imprisoned—briefly jailed once, but never imprisoned or even convicted—a testament to their skill and a model for many wannabe gangs to emulate. They were gathering their leaders and messengers—their apostles—to plan their operations. Their name fit them well.

"Ah, here it is," Yuri announced, interrupting Raiden's thoughts. He pulled the book off the table just as the servers arrived and placed a box containing a massive pastry on it. "Thanks, guys," he told them. To his comrades, he said, "It's time. Shall we go?"

"Let's," Sunny replied. She raised her right hand to the air, saturating the small room with blinding golden light.

When the light faded, the trio and their cake had disappeared.


	13. Straying from the Original Path

The underground motor pool was still abuzz with activity ninety-one minutes before sunset. A squadron of transport helicopters had lifted off earlier with equipment and a few fireteams in order to keep the company's promise to have an advance guard in the DC area by evening.

The men and women headed for Dulles International were to secure the airport and transform it into a supply hub. Not only would this provide the main Combat Support force with a base, it would hamper the enemy's aerial reinforcement capabilities. The militias along the Eastern Seaboard were lacking in air support, but DREBINS had sold them a few squadrons' worth of aircraft ranging from World War II to War Economy Era designs—with the federal government's approval after it received its cut.

Personnel slated for the District proper were to secure and fortify a few landmarks and maybe an embassy or two. Their choppers were allowed access into restricted airspace; most people had no desire to see if there was even a grain of truth in the tales of barbarity surrounding DREBINS Combat Support. The fireteams dropped off at the White House in the first wave would serve to secure the grounds for when their commander arrived.

The main force would arrive in the city in a column of armored vehicles hours later. Heavily-armed, they were to reinforce security at the rest of the embassies and evacuate foreign nationals to the DREBINS Building. The gesture would be politically meaningless; foreigners around the world would consider it the bare minimum the US was supposed to do to protect them while they were on American soil, ungrateful of the fact that these were private citizens and paramilitaries risking their own lives to protect them.

In a small office overlooking the kaleidoscope of movement below, three veteran officers sat side-by-side behind a table as two of them cleaned the gear they would be taking with them in their quick reaction bags. The third, already finished with her preparations, turned to the Demon of Kandahar in surprise at the latter's question.

"The Order?" Tomlinson repeated, looking at a digital clock displaying a trio of fives. She'd have to helo out to DC soon as part of the second wave. "Doomsday cult up north; I grew up in it. Ran the hell out first chance I got because if I hadn't, I'd be a priestess or one of the few bogeywomen today." To herself, she whispered, "Must've been … late September 2003?"

_The steel pipe in her hands was bent completely out of shape and worthless after beating down a pyramid-headed enforcer of the Order. She thought briefly about using her Hi-Power's last round on the monsters closing in on her, but what good would it do?_

"_I'm not going back!" a teenaged Lori screamed at her pursuers through the fog. "Fuck the Order, fuck Shepherd's Glen, fuck God, fuck Paradise, and fuck you! None of you can judge me!"_

_Raising a machete in her right hand and a hammer in her left, she prepared to defend her choice._

"I thought you signed your life away on Pearl Harbor Day," said Faiza, her sharp ears having caught the last part. The swab in her hand came up dirty once again. She tossed it at a nearby trashcan without looking, conjured a new one, and resumed cleaning her arm cannon. "You know, the day after you turned eighteen?"

Shayda Esfahani turned her head toward her colleagues as the swab bounced off the wastebasket's inner rim and rolled around a bit before finally dropping into the bag-lined interior. Among the veterans of the _Outer Haven_, she was the first to become a general officer, an achievement she was beginning to regret. The two sitting at the nearby workbenches were competent commanders in their own right, but they were colonels and thus had far more opportunities to personally take the field. She, on the other hand, had over three decades of experience and was deemed too valuable to lose, even though she'd served the first dozen of those years as a musician and medical orderly.

"I spent a few months outrunning the pigs," explained Tomlinson. A lemniscate tattoo materialized on her right forearm for an instant, flickering out of existence once she had summoned a spare battery pack for her hammer. "Every goddamned fed in New England was out looking for me. They thought I didn't have the mental capacity to think for myself just because I was seventeen. At least they didn't link me to Alex's brother's disappearance."

Images of her own homecoming flashed in Faiza's mind. She remembered the accusations of sodomy and adultery from her betrothed after she refused to marry him. His family further slandered her, insinuating that she had engaged in all sorts of other immorality during her stint on the _Outer Haven_. They'd showed their true colors only after she was of no further use to them, having already milked every cent of hard currency from her paychecks. Still, she bore the attacks with all the dignity and honor of a woman of the faith.

When a number of imams, mullahs, and elderly men called her a blasphemer, though, they finally broke her. There she was, the former Haven Troopers' Bravo Company executive officer, a veteran of bloodshed and slaughter who put her life on the line to benefit others, and these weak-willed civilians _dared_ accuse her of a crime she would never have thought of committing, a crime that carried the death penalty in Pakistan because of their "sensitivities" and aversion to the truth?

She had been forced out of her PMC career by Liquid Ocelot's defeat and the subsequent reforms by an opportunistic UN. All the money she'd saved, she'd been forced to give as a dowry to a family that betrayed her. Her own fiancée would rather they live in poverty than have a wife who posed a danger to his sense of manliness. A bunch of "worthless fossils," as Liquid would have called them, wanted her dead because she'd broken from tradition. Her own family would try to kill her first to preserve their honor, even though she'd been their cash cow. She was damned. If these were the rewards of faith, then Jannah would burn by her hand.

But first, she would have to burn Karachi. She had originally earned the nickname "Faze" among the FROGS of Bravo Company from a mispronunciation of her first name. After she captured a battle rifle and some ammo from the angry mob sent to lynch her, however, all of Karachi learned how the moniker was truly prophetic. To this day, there were still survivors of the battle who broke down screaming and crying whenever they saw an unsheathed machete or smelled the scent of burning meat.

"Well, that explains Arizona, at least," mused Shayda, cutting into Faiza's reminiscence. She looked over the zones they were required to protect and discarded yet another troop allocation schedule as impossible. "No wonder no one could catch us. But you didn't do anything to the Shepherd boy, did you, Lori?"

"Hell no!" Tomlinson denied. "Josh died in a boating accident. I didn't have any beef with the brothers. But their father? Fuck him! Adam Shepherd was one of the biggest assholes in town. Fucking sheriff thought he owned the town just because his ancestors founded it and called it Shepherd's Glen."

"The others being the mayor, your family doctor, and the local judge?" Faiza guessed.

"Exactly," Tomlinson confirmed. "Hold up. I didn't tell this story already, did I?"

"No," said Faiza, "just a lucky guess. Members of the same four … _professions_ got me in trouble in Karachi." A smile briefly tugged at the corner of her lips. "They got theirs."

* * *

The broken, bloody remnants of assorted patriot groups had congregated in the southern outskirts of the city. They knew they still had allies in the area; the county to which it used to belong shared their values and occupied the same political quadrant … but according to them, so did all _true_ Americans.

Sheriff Charles Kinney felt a wave of disgust rise from his stomach as another column of ad hoc ambulances rolled past, carrying his wounded "allies" to one of their sympathizers' hospitals. Most of him recognized that their sacrifices were necessary; the Morris regime was more ruthless and unpredictable than any previous administration and had to be stopped. But for them to knowingly put their children in harm's way to reinforce their points made them no better than the politicians and traitors they opposed. It was cowardice for terrorists to hide behind human shields, and they were patriots, not a mob of irredeemable traitors like the family yesterday. Why would they think the rules would be different for them?

Because they were Americans and deserved special treatment? Because their cause was just? Because of the old lie that extremism in defense of liberty was no vice?

Those arguments didn't mean shit in a fight. Special treatment in a firefight went to those who survived. Right and wrong were determined by the strong. Extremism of any kind blinded people to reason.

There weren't too many casualties being transported; the intense rocket and missile storms that morning had been thorough in reaping the lives of men, women, and children within the beaten zones. Subsequent infantry assaults on select camps left no survivors in their wake. Many others died before being evacuated, and some were succumbing to their wounds even now. Most of the injured being carried in the improvised ambulances were the ones pulled from rubble or blown away by the initial explosions.

Barely half a day had passed, but the attacks were already raising questions and conspiracy theories. On the Internet, there was disbelieving, profanity-laden amateur footage of the sun being completely blotted from the sky for several seconds by a mass of ballistic missiles. In most of these videos, a flight of hovering white-and-blue aircraft was clearly visible in the launch direction immediately after the skies cleared, along with a number of glowing reddish orbs. Then, as some cameramen zoomed in, the ships went into a steep climb out of view.

Military _and_ friendly radar had confirmed at least twenty-seven thousand impacts, but there was no record of any formation of aircraft in the vicinity. The military's statements alone would have smelled of a cover-up, especially with so many airbases nearby, but if even allied sources were reporting no aircraft, then someone out there had stealth fighters. While DREBINS was a leading suspect, the world-dominating megacorporation would have done the job far more efficiently, especially with Longhair and the Demon in the area. No, this had to be the work of someone else.

"_There seems to be another player in this game … the Bad Egg, perhaps?"_

Kinney shot to attention as a random memory from the day before resurfaced. _The Bad Egg? Of course!_ It had to be that wraith of a scumbag. Why else would there have been a trap waiting for him in the _only_ camp he visited that morning? _But that means … oh, no._

* * *

His Stryker had been requisitioned by Combat Support. He would only be able to drive his truck if he was going to Washington as part of the task force, and he'd declined that honor. In response, the Combat Support team on loan from Michigan had borrowed that one as well for logistics purposes. The only modes of transport left for him were his own car and the bikes in San Miguel.

_You goddamned motherfucking boks_, John silently cursed his coworkers. He would never dare voice his complaints in such a vulgar fashion, but old habits died hard. _Oh sure, leave me to figure out how to carry a whole arsenal in the trunk of my car!_

In truth, he had little difficulty stashing hundreds of weapons into the tiny space; all he needed to store all of his wares was one of the infinite capacity backpacks that he owned. For increased security, he placed the portable hole of a bag into another of its kind and stuffed yet more rucks into the second backpack. Theoretically, his acts could have effected the end of the world, but with what he'd seen in action against the revived Vanargand, he would have welcomed the apocalypse.

Django and Sabata's campaigns against beasts and gods out of Norse legend had averted Ragnarok on their world, but the elder brother had suffered greatly in both life and unlife. Sabata just couldn't catch a break, having been turned by his aunt at a young age, forced to have his lover purified, watching his mother die, and then getting his lover back and having to leave her so she could keep Vanargand petrified.

Then came the Istrakan War. Among so many others, two teenagers went into the world seeking answers and emerged from the final battle at Fog Castle as hardened, changed warriors. He had served as a special forces team leader under Sabata, being one of the few people on the planet with experience in infiltration, scouting, and rapid legborne exfiltration. Sunny had been his mirror in San Miguel's army, fighting as one of Django's heavy troopers.

Despite all the horrors on that planet, the brothers' world had a chance for redemption. Earth did not; if anything, humanity knew it was destroying itself, knew it was fast approaching the point of no return, and was ecstatically attempting to hasten its own doom.

"Your reputation precedes you, Drebin 2012," said a young woman's voice from behind him. John turned to find a blonde lady in her mid-twenties dressed in orange robes, standing with her arms folded across her chest. Her skin was a sickly pale gray, and her eyes held the certainty of a fanatic.

_Oh, great, Tomlinson's client_, John told himself. If he severely botched this, it would cost him his rank. _Better turn on the charm_. "Yes ma'am," he answered, adding a slight fake smile. "How may I be of service?"

"I wanted to thank Lori—Colonel Tomlinson—for her efforts in solving the labor dispute near Segovia," the strange woman explained. "As she's nowhere to be found, I thought I would save time and have you relay my gratitude to her."

"I promise I'll tell her," said John. "Will there be anything else, ma'am?"

"No need for formality; we're the same age. You may call me Celia … or Ms. Porter, or even Ms. Fortner; I prefer names to titles." The lady suddenly giggled before regaining her composure. "On a more serious note, yes. The first matter regards you: The Battle of Armistead would have marked you as an enemy of the world but for your company's intervention, but I see your deeds in a different manner. You serve the greater good, even if you must walk through the darkness to serve the light."

_Greater good? _John echoed in his head. _Yeah, sure, lady. I fight for the Moon Beauty, Dark Child, Lucian, or whatever the hell Sabata's calling himself these days._

"That's why I wanted to invite you to my … _organization_'s ribbon-cutting ceremony in the near future."

_She must love castles,_ John quickly reasoned."The one in Japan?"

"Indeed," Celia confirmed. "I understand your company has been developing teleporters. I also understand that I volunteered my castles as testing sites for the same. It would greatly please my congregation to have the stepson of the legendary Roy Campbell present. In particular, a Mr. Blinov has been dying to meet the Casanova of San Miguel."

All the traps in Istrakan had been less obvious than this. John chose his words cautiously. "I see," he said. "I'll make a best effort to be there, but I can't promise anything beyond that."

He didn't voice his concern that the castle in Japan was a literal deathtrap. With all the spikes and swinging blades the interior boasted, Celia _had_ to want someone killed. The hexagram-shaped basement below the rear tower's mine looked like six different circles of Hell, and the portal in the center sounded like it led to the _real_ one. This woman was fucked in the head, no doubt about, but sadly, she was still saner than much of the world.

"That will be good enough," Celia replied. She extended her right arm to the side and summoned a backpack onto the ground from a pillar of white light. "Now, on to the second matter: I've heard of your exploits around the world. You rescued that poor soda company manager from South Ashfield when no one else dared stand with her. You cast down several drug smuggling rings in Mexico in under a month with the help of Cipher and the Salamanders.

"General Esfahani suggested that I pass on my equipment to those I deemed worthy of wielding it. I can think of no one more worthy than you, and I ask that when the time comes, you select a worthy successor as well."

* * *

Cheap linoleum flooring had become a dull gray metal deck; plain stucco walls had turned into riveted bulkheads. Banners marking great victories hung from the ceiling, illustrations depicting battles out of myths were mounted on the walls, and busts of a sunflower with a face and a long nose were placed at the room's corners.

The booth where they were sitting had also changed. The round table was now decorated with a twelve-pointed star, and the tacky vinyl of their seats had been replaced by an exquisite material that as felt as light as air, yet stronger than the toughest manmade armor on Earth.

"Welcome to space," Sunny stated to a speechless Raiden. "Before you ask—and you've been doing a lot of asking even for yourself, don't think I haven't noticed—no, we're nowhere near the Sol System. We're on a station orbiting Django and Sabata's homeworld. We got it all here, from hydroponic farms to manufacturing and docking stations." Turning to Yuri, she nodded and jerked a thumb behind herself.

"Built by DREBINS, of course, but what isn't?" Yuri added, heading off the second question before it could be asked. The big blond man lifted the cake box from the table and turned around to set it on the one Sunny had indicated. "There we go. Now we got room."

"Kids," Raiden said at last, "a word of advice: When you're involved in something illegal and trying to recruit someone from the outside, you don't introduce them to the top echelons first. It's a security risk; it lets them ID or kill your leaders. You should have had me meet your greenest people first."

"Technically, sir, we did do that," said Yuri. "Each Dark Apostle is the OG of a gang, but the Virginia chapter is the youngest one under the umbrella. If we wanted to reveal our top brass, we would've had you meet our guys in New York or Philadelphia. If you wanted to meet my boss, she's in—well, I'm not sure. She's probably en route to Washington by now. If you want to meet Sunny's boss, you already know him, and you wouldn't kill him because then your wife would kill you. If you want to meet our supreme commander, you'll have to schedule an appointment several months in advance and specifically ask for Old Ricky. On that note, I don't think anyone from DC can make it tonight."

"We're fundamentally no different from the militias and terrorists we're fighting," Sunny pointed out. "Hypocrites, ain't we all?"

* * *

What could he do?

On paper, he was one of Armistead County's two chief law enforcement officers. Expenses weren't his problem, and if someone griped about corruption and waste resulting from that attitude, the threat of a doing a bid normally shut them up. If their lips were still loose after that reality check, then there was always the fact that there was no one was innocent. Since traffic stops were extremely dangerous and protecting and serving demanded split-second decisions, perhaps the next time the criminal-lovers were flagged down for a moving violation, they might brandish a weapon they never knew they were carrying. The LEO making the stop would have no choice but to open fire a few dozen times.

Most people didn't believe in ghosts. The ones who did often found the cameras capable of capturing such images to be out of their price range. Ghost hunting was therefore a largely lost craft, reduced to a hobby for the very rich, eccentric, or government-funded.

But to be asked by his counterpart from the Sheriff's Office was a different matter. Kinney, the former leatherneck armorer, had asked to borrow his personal camera to exorcise his own demons. He had nothing against the guy, but it seemed that wherever Kinney went, death, destruction, and terrorism followed.

He didn't need this shit, but there was nothing he could do. Fourteen years ago, it had been a stroke of luck that he was not selected to go on that ill-fated mission to rescue a Russian girl from her captor. Eight men died in horrific ways that bloody day, their bodies twisted beyond all recognition as if a dark child had sadistically mangled them like ragdolls. He'd bailed on that agency the first chance he got, choosing service in the nascent Armistead Police Department instead. A heavy pay cut and being posted to gangland were small losses compared to being far away from whatever horrible nightmare had done that to a SWAT team.

For Lucky Charlie to show up at his office on his way back from escorting militia casualties to the hospital across the street was a bad omen, and he knew it. The Sheriff had lived a charmed life ever since his family was murdered, but it was said that everyone else who encountered him would be cursed until their deaths.

More immediately, without his camera, he would have no defense against the ghosts of Armistead—and there were many, _many_ spirits seeking vengeance against a society that failed them even in death. The phantoms of the eight officers were among the oldest and most powerful, but there were also the social workers and politicians murdered in retribution for organizing the raid, along with several thousand assorted scum of the Earth liquidated in the gang wars in the city.

In particular, he was afraid of the shadow who rampaged through so many Virginia Department of Social Services offices. Russian Girl's kidnapper apparently had ties to the Mafiya and many police departments in his pocket, because not only had the girl been moved before the raid, an invisible hitman rained death and terror upon the heavily-defended local branches of the DSS—and especially the CPS offices and personnel within—with a suppressed .22. By contrast, all the shrill protesters retaliating for what they called a state-sanctioned kidnapping were lucky to even get a few words in before having some sense, along with their skulls, beaten into them.

_One man_ was said to have turned Virginia from a state where law-and-order barely held back the onslaught of crime and immorality into the lawless wasteland that it became fourteen years later. Which man that referred to … the police chief didn't know. Was the abductor responsible, or did the public blame the lunatic gunslinger? Or did they hold the government crony who ordered the raid responsible?

It didn't matter. In the years since, the dead had not been silent, yet he had greatly benefited from their sorrow. Ghosts harmed and killed people; as he couldn't arrest the dead, there was nothing he could do for the public except take an extra-long break … at taxpayer expense, of course. As long as he got his three hundred grand salary every year and unofficial bonuses, he would bullshit some feel-good results for the public to eat up.

But things had changed today. One of the few known defenses against the supernatural was a pricey custom camera made by a local company called Otacon-Soul. Capable of cleansing haunted areas of tortured souls, the original compression software was rumored to have been written by a forsaken six-year-old, and it remained damned good even today. If he didn't get it back soon, he wouldn't survive the month. With Kinney's visit, even if he _did_ get it back, his life expectancy could now be measured in days.

Noting how cold his hands felt, he removed a sheet of paper from his printer, clicked open his pen, and began preparing a holographic will. Until he met with his attorney, it was all the condemned police chief could do.

* * *

The world had gone insane long ago.

It was a statement of fact, not an opinion. The founding of Otacon-Soul had not been without its drawbacks; its popular virtual training games were vital in teaching advanced skills to ordinary people. Abilities like piloting aircraft, machining, medicine, survival, weaving, and defusing nuclear bombs were no longer the exclusive domains of highly-trained experts.

The albino teenager in the brand new white pimp coat was a strange one, Otacon had to admit. If Genya's assessment of the boy—Gunner Cruz's son, by coincidence—was correct, he could dominate souls, fight his way through a demon castle in a solar eclipse, capture a bunch of tsuchinoko, go to a chaotic realm, kick some Chaos ass, and return alive. What the kid _couldn't_ do was admit that he was in love with his redheaded childhood friend.

The boy waved to Otacon as he exited the virtual training area. He was tearing his way through the program as part of his morning exercise before his classes at university. How it was possible for him to kill all those monsters in under four minutes per run was unknown, as was how he had gotten physical rewards to materialize from VR.

"Impressive charged attacks," remarked the other of the boy's watchers. The tall, longhaired, impeccably dressed man entered the data into his tablet in his lap. Without shifting his focus, he explained to Otacon, "I'm interested in a counter-ambush module as well. How soon can you have the alpha ready?"

"I don't know, Genya," Otacon responded, wiping the sleepiness from his eyes. He hadn't been thinking of licensing this simulation to a Japanese intelligence agency at all; he and the company executives hadn't planned on coming to Japan to make any sales. "I'm not even sure we can launch the DLC we promised to our fans on schedule. Pathing fixes were difficult enough."

Quite a few players had complained about the armor system, in which gold equipment was heavy and good only for ceremonial purposes, chainsaws were next to useless in close combat, and armor protected only what it covered. It seemed that the fantasy games of the past had drilled some dangerous presumptions into the minds of gamers, notions that would get them killed in the real world. Making a DLC catering to this market was projected to bring in several million dollars in additional revenue, but no matter what Otacon-Soul chose to do, it stood to lose several long-time customers.

"You won't go unrewarded," Genya tried. The Japanese agent—was he even Japanese?—held the palm of his right hand out. A glowing cube materialized and floated into the air before displaying a hologram and a readout of its contents. "I'm prepared to offer you the contents of this storage device in exchange for your services."

Otacon shook his head. "It's not about money; it's about modifying the source code. Programs like this get more complicated the more add-ons you install; that's why we're having trouble with our DLC and the modules you want installed. At some point, you'd be better off starting from scratch with a program specifically designed for your needs. It's why Sunny reforges old equipment instead of repairing it."

"Ah, your niece," the agent said. He dismissed the cube with a gesture. "I hope my samples are of use to her. How is she, by the way?"

"Sunny's holding on as best she can," Otacon answered. "That's what she told me last time, anyway. If she'd stop shooting her elephant gun, her shoulder would heal in a day." He shrugged and pushed his glasses back up. "But if she doesn't keep shooting, she won't be able to pay off her debts. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, right?"

"Indeed," Genya agreed. His eyes darted to the Cruz boy, who was chugging bottles of red liquid with a tall, bearded black man wearing a military uniform. "There was, as you recall, a recent incident in this country regarding a missionary, the infamous Graham Jones. I understand he had a sizable following in your country."

"I wouldn't know," said Otacon. "I don't watch religious programming."

Genya ignored the cries for water from Cruz's friend. "Yes, well, we uncovered evidence of his links to terrorism and a doomsday cult. If we didn't take his life, we believed he would have unleashed all manner of death and destruction on the world. His followers certainly had the resources."

The story was interrupted by a loud sigh of relief after the soldier finally gulped down several liters of water. Genya and Otacon both turned toward the man, who suddenly became very sheepish.

"And yet," Genya continued, "there were many in this very country who were against his assassination. They spoke of how we weren't your country, that this was murder. Some religious emissaries feared that if we were to execute him, they would be next. In the end, we were ordered to let him live."

Something obviously didn't add up. If Jones was not to be harmed, then barring natural causes or his own actions, he would still be alive. From what the media had pieced together, Jones was stabbed repeatedly by a Spanish exchange student in this town.

Except there were no Spanish exchange students in Hakuba at the time of the murder; in fact, there were very few exchange students in Hakuba, period. The only person whose name sounded anything like Spanish was the Cruz boy, but not only was he American, he was a native Japanese speaker who signed his name in kanji.

"It was Cruz, wasn't it?" Otacon questioned. "He killed Jones."

Genya nodded. Typical of any Japanese business discussion, a long silence followed as he mulled over what to reveal. "As you said," he answered, "'damned if you do, damned if you don't.' Jones grew too dangerous. He believed he was the reincarnation of the demon king who died in the solar eclipse of 1999 by dint of being born on the same day. I'm not proud of pressing Mr. Cruz into my service, but with his aid, we were able to end Graham Jones and recover a man missing for thirty-six years. No, I'm not proud, but if I'm to be damned regardless of my actions, I'll still fight for what I believe in to the bitter end. To do otherwise would dishonor the memory of my mother."

"What happened to her, your mother?" asked Otacon. Changing the subject was not his intention, but "If you don't mind answering, that is."

"She was a doctor who distributed medicine to a backwater village stricken by plague," said Genya. His normally calm tone now carried the faintest hint of sorrow. "They burned her alive for witchcraft as I watched. Yet even in her last moments, she did not curse them, Doctor Emmerich. She held fast to her belief in humanity, even though it cost her her life, and begged my father and me to do no harm to others, for life is already a hard lot. From her words, I interpreted two meanings: To not harm others if possible and to stand for your beliefs."

"I'm sorry," said Otacon, feeling foolish for having asked. "I'm sure she's in a better place."

Genya shook his head. "Not so. Back in 2017, I was told by a grinning Russian spirit wearing glasses and black fatigues that she was reincarnated as the child of a FROG. With so many birth defects and mutations possible, Hana Hakuba's daughter is blessed in that her only mutation is in her hair color."

* * *

"_Uh-huh,_" said Tomlinson over the Codec. "_How nice of her. Go ahead and keep it for now, or maybe give it to Gurlukovich when you see her._"

_Well, that was easy_, both Tomlinson and John thought.

"_I'll have Al—Colonel Smithee—come around and take over until I get back._" The background noise of a helicopter faded. "_And Campbell? If by some dark coincidence you meet this Fernandez character General Esfahani mentioned, tell him to watch out for the fog over DC. Have fun wherever you're going and good luck._"

John waited until his boss broke the connection before locking the door to his secret room. With so much unrest in the world, people like him were in high demand. As a result, the twenty-five-year-old salesman had done well for himself, being able to own his custom-built home by his age.

An approved military could hire a qualified Drebin officer to conjure and fire cruise missiles at their enemies for twenty to a hundred grand an hour. Tomahawks alone were worth about half a million dollars each, and newer missiles cost significantly more; having a Combat Support officer blot out the sun or stars with flying explosives was a cheaper, more politically correct alternative to fighting a conventional war.

He wasn't qualified for that line of work yet, but there were people willing to pay huge markups on precious metals. The bombings of the protesters' camps had already sent shockwaves throughout the world; gold prices shot up within minutes of the first impact. Fewer and fewer people trusted fiat money these days, placing their faith in an ancient form of hard currency instead.

Those people were gambling, and come the end of the week, there would be some _very_ sad investors. He, Keller, and Tomlinson were planning sold off the tons of gold they held through a network of middlemen, which would send a mild shock through the commodities market. If their actions caused a chain reaction, then they could spend the weekend relaxing and preparing for Arizona. More likely, flooding the market with around two hundred million dollars' worth of metal would barely cause a dent on prices because of the ongoing panic, but Sunny had proven that ingots of precious metals counted as munitions and could be created at will.

John had no intention of explaining to anyone not in the know about what he was going to do, least of all his parents. If his father weren't a cyborg ninja, he'd probably have a heart attack from seeing his son rob the world and break the financial backbones of so many terrorist groups all at the same time. His mother probably wouldn't care; she'd found the chest containing Doomy and Luxana's love letters and present to him.

_Aw, shit._

"Oh, John, you're such a sweet boy," said Rose, "naming a sword after me!"

_That's a relief_, John thought. Not only did his mother apparently not care that the house had secret rooms, she thought his sword from the war, La Vie en Rose, referred to her. As long as she didn't translate the name into English, he was fine.

"But why didn't you tell us you were dating twins at the same time?" she continued.

John shrugged. "Didn't think it was worth mentioning. They got careers, I have work, and there's no way I'm going back to Istrakan."

"Istrakan?" repeated Rose. "John, I know the three of us swore never to vacation in Silent Hill again after what happened up there, but is this … place that bad?"

"Mom," John said, "remember that summer while I was in high school? I disappeared from home for about ten minutes and came back with a bunch of coffins, a motorcycle, a truckload of weapons, and a truck."

"How could I forget? Thank God no one came looking for us," remarked Rose. "I remember thinking Roy never should've taught you to drive if you'd go and hijack a Mob shipment."

"That was the Istrakan War," John stated. "To everyone on Earth, I was gone for a few minutes. To us in the trenches, we were there for ages. Whenever we thought we were done, we'd get sent back to the beginning to fight the whole war over again. It was like … well, the only things that come to mind are those video games with replay modes where you get to keep all your memories and stuff for another go at an emblem or a gold trophy you _just_ miss every time. It gets old after the hundredth run."

* * *

Sunny's commander from the Istrakan War was a most interesting fellow. The blond man's colorful red scarf contrasted with the rest of his drab clothing, and the bandana and goggles on his head hinted at hobbies that involved high speeds or other dangers to the eyes. His early model Gun del Sol rested in a leg holster, and his stealthed backpack bulged with dozens of items.

He wasn't part of the gang, Raiden noted. Sunny and Yuri were surprised by his presence at the briefing, even if neither had said anything. The young man hadn't been kicked out, which implied a certain degree of trust between him and the Apostles.

_Keep an eye on him_. There was something off about the man, almost like he harbored great power within himself. _Almost feels like … no. They don't exist._

"Mad Dog, Scorpion, I want you to finish off the 102nd Patriot Volunteers," Yuri was saying. "We hit them hard today, but a few stragglers remain. At last count, they have four light tanks left—old Chinese Type 62s—with unknown infantry support. Be careful out there."

"Piece of cake," one of the affected OGs replied. Raiden couldn't find the one who had spoken up, but the deepness of the voice meant it was likely one of the tough-looking men sitting up front.

"Angels," Yuri continued, "You'll be hitting outposts near the I-95. Expect to engage a lot of transports along the roads; the weekend warriors among the militias are turning tail and running. I recommend the Bee Fatty this time, but you're free to choose your own craft and payloads. I want you all to be prepped for the jump to Sol III in two hours."

"What about Delta Squadron, Cipher?" asked one of the Angel pilots, using Yuri's TAC name.

Yuri winced at the question. "Delta's flights will run some merc work for an old friend, Langhaar. CAP and all that over I-66 to protect the allied column headed for Washington."

"The Assault Gundog Bitch?" asked the same pilot. "Longhair? The one whose idea of a diversion while she wasted every last settler east of Jerusalem was getting us into a dogfight with the entire IAF?" She laughed. "You poor bastard, Fernandez! It's gonna be a boring night for you guys!"

_He knows Esfahani_, Raiden observed. _They have more ties to DREBINS than I thought. But are they just pawns, or …?_

"One effective; the Salamanders are unavailable," reported Sunny. "Two, if his sorry ass gets here."

_Los Salamandras,_ translated Raiden. _Gang responsible for a string of kidnappings and murders in Mexico. Thought to be a cartel hit squad until they burned down a warehouse full of drugs … and a whole town. Now suspected to be government-sponsored mercs. What the hell have you done, Sunny? How far from Philanthropy have you strayed?_

"Can't you just write in that book of yours and wish everything goes right with the Metal Gear and Washington?" questioned another Apostle. "Or at least pray we don't get sick from too much cake?"

"I'd like that, too," agreed Sunny, "but I don't think Howie or Valti want me using the _Book of Memories _for every little thing. Besides, I kinda promised a solar gun demo."

_Howard Blackwood and Valtiel_. Raiden recognized them as the helpful mailman and beast, respectively, from his family's disastrous vacation in Silent Hill. Rose had put her foot down afterwards, forcing him and John to swear never to go up there again, or she would force-feed them her cooking. Considering the food she'd made and packed for the trip poisoned most of the town's monsters to death, that was no idle threat.

He would have been concerned at Sunny's dismissal of a civil war as something minor if he didn't know her better. God only knew why she and John would rewrite reality; better yet, God only knew how much of reality they had rewritten already. Those two had too much access to arsenals for their own good.

The Koppelthorn Engine, used to help create some higher-definition VR games on the market, could be repurposed for interdimensional travel. Being completionist gamers, Sunny and John had dragged several empires' worth of loot back from other worlds to finance Otacon's company and its parent corporation. Not many people knew of the role those three played in making DREBINS the dominant company in the world or that most modern advances were stolen from parallel universes, and no one cared.

Then there was that book of Sunny's that she stole from the evidence locker of a police station. Many years before coming into Sunny's possession, the tome had belonged to a murderer named Merrick, who'd used it to escape from Portland's infamous Ryall State Prison. One of Sunny's acquaintances had previously dueled and defeated Merrick, causing the criminal to be recaptured.

The theft of the book caused Merrick to escape from the pen once again. Unfortunately for the madman with a pathetically low single-digit body count, he'd foolishly chosen to confront Sunny in her apartment armed with only a knife. When she finally chucked him out a window of South Ashfield Heights' Room 302, Merrick was barely more than a pile of ground meat.

It turned out that the entire incident was orchestrated by Howard Blackwood himself. After Merrick stole from the immortal mailman's store, Blackwood placed a hit on the fugitive, promising the right to use the book to whoever killed him—with a bonus if Merrick suffered first. In exchange for Sunny's services, Blackwood refurbished the book for her.

Writing in the _Book of Memories_ allowed her to change the past by defeating her own nightmares. Raiden hadn't completely followed her explanation of how it worked, but it seemed that a team of up to four people with their own books could get together and fight their way through dungeons to rewrite history as they saw fit, and John had received one of his own during that dreadful vacation. If screwing with time wasn't necessary, the book could be used as a self-updating journal that contained all of her thoughts, hopes, and dreams; as long as she bothered to consult it, she would never forget anything.

The less said about her encounters with the gentleman in the silk hat, the better. Saint Germain, a purported time traveler who looked a lot like Revolver Ocelot and in whose honor this space station had been named? If she was telling the truth, then how many time paradoxes had she created?

"That concludes our briefing," said Yuri, causing Raiden to snap out of his thoughts. "Sunny, good luck; we expect to see the vid from your fight with the Metal Gear. Knowing you, you'll catch it off guard. Questions? Does anybody have any other questions?"

A gloved hand shot up. "Yeah, I got one," declared Sunny's former CO. "When are you gonna fix the weather in San Miguel? Master Otenko's driving me nuts."

"In time, Django," Sunny answered. "Just keep using the Mr. Rainnots for now. And how'd you even hear about this meeting?"

Django shrugged. "Heard there was cake, also heard you were up here. Only one reason why both would be in the same place at the same time. Haven't seen Big John, though."

That was no surprise to Raiden; he knew his son acted as a liaison between the New York and Virginia sets. John was an OG by default from his role in creating this branch of his gang along with Sunny and an "Old Ricky" who was not in attendance. Come to think of it, no representatives from DC had come to the meeting.

The missing man was busy in Washington; from what little had been spoken about him during the briefing, Old Ricky seemed to have infiltrated the federal government as an employee of some sort. He wasn't the "Admiral" Sunny mentioned before; there were promotions all around for the _Missouri_'s heroics, but there was only one sailor who was promoted from captain because of her leadership that day.

Raiden slumped in his chair, feeling inadequate and obsolete for the first time in years. He was proud of his son and Sunny for taking his lessons to heart, to be sure, but for them to apply their knowledge in such a scale was unbelievable. In but a single day, he was introduced to so much that he'd once thought impossible, from solar forging to working teleporters to civilians owning FTL-capable starships.

There were many times he'd come close to being killed, only to be recovered and rebuilt. He looked down at his hands and wondered if his own body contained alien technology. The cybernetics on the market were improving; his latest body possessed gave him a better sense of touch than a normal human's and was fully functional. Unusually, it was not directly designed by DREBINS; instead, an old man from Donburi Island—a place that didn't exist on Earth—sent his notes over to the megacorp in exchange for funding and parts to upgrade his gynoid.

Yet all of that paled in comparison to the revelation that those wacky kids had built a criminal empire in space. It was quite an achievement to fly through space, but to settle it, even in a station orbiting a planet, was centuries beyond Earth's capability.

* * *

"Mom, I'm running late as is," John complained. "I was supposed to be at the meeting a long time ago. We can catch up later."

"John, you've been avoiding us since you moved down here!" Rose countered. "You don't call, you don't write—you never let us know what's going on! I'm your mother, for Christ's sakes! I'd like to not be the last one to know things about my only son!"

John sighed in defeat. There was no winning this argument, and he knew it. "Fine," he said, "you wanna see what my world's like?" He grabbed a black card from an end table. "Doors and windows all locked?"

"Yes," Rose answered. "Why?"

"I'm about to transport us to the twins' planet," said John. "Space station, actually, but we'll have to make a connecting jump in between."

The card in his hand almost instantly plunged the room into darkness. As light slowly returned, they could distinguish an arched portal in front of them, its edges wreathed in shadow. A young woman with bluish-gray skin, black hair, and in a red maid's outfit strode out, her very presence chilling the air. She gave a polite curtsy, to which John responded with a bow.

The lady giggled. "Always the gentleman."

"Hello, Doomy," John greeted. "Sorry to call you so early, but I need a special favor from you."

"Anything for you, _Running Boy_," Doomy said, placing special emphasis on John's title. "But obviously, you'll have to repay me within three days. If not … a really terrible thing will happen! Sounds fun, huh?"

"Uh-huh," deadpanned John. He had no desire to run on the Punishment Room's treadmill again. "Listen, how much would it cost to warp my mother and me to San Miguel, and from there to the _Saint Germain_?"

"For you, dearie? Nothing." She turned her head toward Rose as she began walking toward John. "For her?" She whispered her price into John's ear and winked.

John's eyes widened. "Luxana won't be happy, you know," he whispered back. "And she _will_ find out."

"Then pay her as well," Doomy countered. "Do we have a deal?"

Things were not going to plan. Any other man would have ecstatically agreed to her terms, but John refused to be ruled by his baser instincts. Sabata had taught him to forsake desires, abandon dreams, and refuse comforts, for they would lead to and magnify future anguish. Despite his training, though, he relented. "All right."

Doomy brightened up. "Thank you very much!" she said as she kissed him. The otherworldly loan shark enveloped John and Rose in darkness as she sent them to their destination. Before she returned to her own realm, though, she took a look at the house and whistled in amazement. "Wow. The Running Boy has excellent taste. Where'd he get that chocolate fountain, anyway?"

* * *

The gunship resembled an Apache Longbow, but no government military would ever approve of its price tag, defense be damned. Like so much of the world's corporeal goods, the helicopter outperformed its parent design by a fair margin and was manufactured by DREBINS.

Two executives sat in lawn chairs on the White House's South Lawn, drinking bottles of sweetened ice tea. One was a woman from a working-class New England family who had joined the military at a young age to escape her town's cult and ended up fighting religious fundamentalists of another sort. The other was a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the scion of a wealthy Texan rancher and an exiled Spanish noble. Like the woman, he had joined the service in his teens and was sent to kill extremists halfway around the world.

"Idiot-proof, you say," President Morris muttered. He laughed and shook his head, palm on face. "Colonel, I served in the same branch as you around the same time period. You know damned well there's no such thing as idiot-proof in the military. Even when you specifically order an FNG to screw up, he'll find a way to misinterpret your order. But I am interested in these Tom Tigers and the upgraded UH-1s for personal use; they'll make retiring in the Galuga Archipelago you people are building a lot more pleasant."

"Great," said Tomlinson. "You want me to get it off the lawn? I know your security detail doesn't care, but I personally don't like the idea of those Hellfires pointing in our direction."

"Oh, just leave it for now," dismissed Morris. "Your team fortifying the ol' Whiskey Hotel will do far worse damage than all the Hellfires in the world, especially with Cher and the Shepherds helping them out. It's not like some old missiles could do any damage, not with this shield up."

One of Tomlinson's brows shot up. "Shield?" she repeated. In mock indignation, she added, "Why, Eiji Morris, of all the ways you people could've betrayed the company, you had to install a non-DREBINS shield!" After both of them finished chuckling, she asked, "Clear Skies?"

E. J. "Eiji" Morris nodded in confirmation. "Just like Grandma Charlotte taught me. Came in handy a few times in the castle and the sandbox. Kept me from winning the Purple Heart, but just between us, I prefer having my ass intact. You used be in the Order; what magic do you know?"

Tomlinson shook her head before tossing her empty bottle into the recycling bag behind her and grabbing a new drink. "I can't remember. I haven't used Order stuff since I got the hell out of the Glen—you can thank Alex for giving me the idea, even if it was the Shepherds' cover story for his going mental and getting sent to Alchemilla. I wanted to kill every last insurgent asshole I came across for being just as delusional as the Order, but that path leads to the Otherworld and being hunted by Pyramid Head. And one Pyramid Head in particular hates my guts after I kicked his ass and jacked his gear."

"You never used it even _after_ you left the Corps?"

Tomlinson took a swig. "I couldn't. The Order incorporates emotion into its magic. We FROGs were under some strong-ass SOP control while we were on duty; we weren't allowed to feel anything. No emotions, no magic.

"_Off_ duty was a different story," Tomlinson continued. "But we were on a ship and I didn't like the idea of sinking us. Still, we pulled some crazy shit; you should've seen us prank the B&B Corps with some Two-Han Princess song. Little did we know that our bosses _liked_ it and thought about using it to subdue those crazy bitches if they ever got out of control." She shuddered at the memory of walking into Vamp's office to deliver a report and seeing the shirtless man dancing and singing along. "By now, I'm rusty as hell. What about you?"

Morris rested his head against his chair. "Me? I can't catch a break; it's like someone new tries to kill me every other day. Cheryl whacks most them before I can, but when she's not with me, it's party time. It's fun to advance on some punk while he's wondering why in the fuck his shots ain't doing shit at point-blank range."

"Amen to that!" Tomlinson agreed, saluting with her bottle. "I have a feeling Esfahani and Zia have their own stories. You might try asking them tomorrow." Noting the darkening sky, she suggested, "maybe we should go inside now."

"We probably should," said Morris. He stood up and waited for Tomlinson to do the same. "I'll clean up here, if you don't mind."

Almost as soon as he spoke those words, all of their trash disappeared. Turning toward the lawn chairs, Morris caused them to vanish as well. He finished by removing the gunship from the world.

Tomlinson was momentarily alarmed before she recognized the effect. "Ah, inventory cube. New project of yours?"

"Yup," the President answered. "When we stormed that castle in western Romania back in '99, one of our worst holdups was we had to get close to something we wanted to collect it. I could make cubes to steal stuff from far away, or I could make 'em hold as much I want, but I was never able to get both effects at the same time. Strange how the most useful magic involves something as mundane as inventory management or being able to see around corners."

* * *

The faint aroma of a cake wafted out into the corridors. Sounds of conversation from the Dark Apostles' meeting room meant the gang hadn't left yet. The men and women within were likely making final preparations before they deployed. Certain that they were at the right place within the right time frame, John and Rose entered the room.

"DREBINS' teleporters are _machines_, Jack," said the familiar voice of a figure dressed in blue power armor. "Theirs take up entire rooms. The one we have in the diner _doesn't_. It uses solar magic to move matter between Point A and Point B, just like the portals in my uncle's house or John's place."

Rose was dimly aware that her husband was chatting with the Gurlukovich girl, but her mind was elsewhere. Paintings depicting the Istrakan War covered the walls and banners representing campaigns hung from the ceilings, but she noticed an underlying theme to the honors in how they showed the desperation of the eventual victors.

_The End of the Line_ was a fully 3D image of two soldiers standing before a blown bridge, guns leveled at an unseen enemy … or so Rose thought. As the image rotated, she could see the thousands upon thousands of horrors that assaulted that position in all their glory. The golden plaque beneath indicated that the pair went on to become the Trigger of Sol and the Running Boy, which was a relief, even if the titles seemed somewhat familiar.

_For the Crying Witch_ was a painting about the battle to save the soul of the titular woman. The description told of how she had sacrificed her soul to guard the Beast of Destruction and keep it petrified, only for it to eventually overpower her. In the time she had bought, however, the witch's allies had devised a method to return her to the world of the living and to destroy the beast once and for all. While the ritual was being prepared, Solar Boy Django and Dark Boy Sabata held the beast at bay with the aid of their lieutenants and a wizard named Cipher.

_Solar Forging_ told the story of weapons production during the siege of San Miguel. The process could theoretically convert pocket knives into swords out of myth. Trained by Steel Smith himself, the Trigger of Sol worked tirelessly to churn out as many high-grade weapons as she could to equip the Army of the City of the Sun. Her efforts saved countless lives and later led to technological breakthroughs on several planets, including her own.

_The Debts of Others_ was an animated picture of a white-haired man running on a treadmill in a darkened basement. Commissioned many years after the war, it was a monument to a young man who repaid San Miguel's war debts and earned the city's eternal gratitude as a living saint of debtors. Throughout several agonizing days of continuous running, he never hesitated nor faltered, earning him the title of Running Boy. A _living_ saint … then he must have survived.

"Hey, look who's finally here!" a burly blond man called out from his seat at a table, breaking Rose out of her thoughts. His neat suit clashed with his hair, but that was to be expected. "Big John!"

"Good to see you too, Fernandez," John replied automatically. "Sorry I couldn't make it earlier. I tried giving myself a head start, but one of my boss' clients tried to convert me to her cult and gave me a message to relay and a set of gear to give to someone 'worthy,' whatever that means. After I got home, it took _forever_ for my boss to call via Codec. She wanted me to warn you about the fog over DC tomorrow."

"Fog?" echoed Rose. "It's supposed to be clear tomorrow."

"I don't think Tomlinson—my boss—was talking about natural fog, Mom," explained John. "Remember Silent Hill? She's from the area … and she was born into one of the sects of the cult that attacked us."

"Oh, this your mother?" asked Yuri. To Rose, he said, "How do you do, ma'am? I'm Yuri Fernandez, one of the subcontractors for your son's company. John and I know each other from the war and Dr. Cinnamon's cyborg project. If you have no food allergies, feel free to help yourself to the cake."

"Why, thank you, Mr. Fernandez," said Rose. "I'll get a slice for you too, John."

As his mother ran off toward the cake, John sat down across from Yuri. "That bought us a bit of time," John told the bigger man. "I'm in deep trouble, bro."

"Yeah, I figured," whispered Yuri. "It's your dad who has lunar blood, and I had to spend extra energy transporting him because he's a cyborg. If your mom's normal how'd you … oh, not again! When and where?"

John sighed in defeat. "Friday evening, San Miguel Inn, both sisters. Doomy gave me three days, but she won't accept payment until the fourth and she doesn't want SOLL."

"Normally, I'd congratulate a man who managed to make a relationship with two beautiful, rich twins work," noted Yuri. "You, though? You're one unlucky player."

"I can't handle both of them at the same time, Yuri," John admitted. "You gotta help me out here."

"Can't you ask your stepdad for advice?" Yuri asked.

John shook his head. "He died a few years back. We buried him next to Solid Snake."

"The cemetery with the Easter lilies, you mean," guessed Yuri. "Yeah, I've been there. Got distant relatives buried there, myself."

"Wrong one," John disclosed. "That's the one where _Naked_ Snake—Big Boss—was buried next to the memorial to his mentor. Otacon couldn't get a plot for Solid Snake there, so he did the next best thing. The Colonel was buried in the one with the poppies from Tselinoyarsk."

Yuri could feel his hands freezing at that last statement. Upon noticing that the shock had caused him to inadvertently begin casting his family's trademark ice spell, he generated a spark of fire and unfroze them. "You're kidding, right? That place is haunted like a motherfucker."

Fernandez wasn't exaggerating. No one in the know wanted to be inside the graveyard when the gates were locked, not since the DREBINS/FROGs expedition to salvage equipment from Shadow Moses had proven the existence of ghosts and poltergeists. No amount of evidence would convince the public, which was why people who wandered into the cemetery after hours tended to disappear.

"Of course not, but let's get back on topic," John redirected. "If you can't help, you know someone who can?"

"You tried asking Sunny?" suggested Yuri.

"Now that's just ridiculous, Yur," blurted John. "What would Sunny know about women?"

* * *

"Jack?" Rose whispered to her husband. "A word?"

Raiden was surprised yet again this evening. "Rose? How did you get—no, wait: The boy. What is it?"

"Take a look," she urged him. "Our son's been keeping the truth from us! He's been traveling to other star systems. He's fought against nightmares we can't even begin to describe. He's been hiding swords and tarot cards. He's—he's been dating twins for the last few years and never told us!"

"That's nothing," argued Raiden. "I've driving around town with Sunny. We stopped for a weapons test earlier. Her gun blew up an SUV with one shot at one percent power, and get this: John's copy is just like hers."

"Well, John summoned one of his girlfriends with a card," mentioned Rose. "She's like—like she absorbs light. I think her name was Doomy. She warped us here like magic."

"I got here from a teleporter in a diner," Raiden said. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there, but Sunny's friend is a wizard, a real, honest-to-God wizard. Then I got introduced to her gang's OGs."

As someone unaccustomed to gangs, Rose was puzzled by the term. "OGs?"

"Original Gangsters," Raiden clarified. "With the exception of us and maybe that guy in the corner—" he indicated the man eating cake and chatting with a long-nosed sunflower, "all of the people here are veteran gangbangers. They run themselves like a cross between organized crime and a terrorist network, but each of them has a legitimate college degree or high-level day job."

"What have gotten ourselves into, Jack?"

"I don't know," Raiden admitted. "I'm not sure I want to know. Yesterday, the world was simply mad. Today, we entered Wai Wai World." He looked around for Sunny and saw her talking to the sunflower. "Rose, listen: There's a Metal Gear running loose somewhere in Virginia. Soon, I'll go with Sunny to destroy it. I want you to stay here; it's much safer than the house."

"Okay," Rose reluctantly agreed. "What should I do about John?"

"Dammit," Raiden cursed, "I forgot about him. He'll try to go to Washington no matter what we do. All right, I'll see if I can get him to join us. I don't like it, but at least I can keep an eye on him." He finally looked down at the objects his wife was carrying. "Why two slices?"

"One's for John," she responded. "I asked around about what's in it; they said chocolate-bearnut spread. I'm not sure I heard them right, but they mentioned something about invincibility while they were cutting it." She glanced over in her son's direction. "What did you learn about this Genya man people keep mentioning?"

"Japanese government agent," said Raiden. "Former JASDF pilot, and a damned good one. Some of my better swords come from him. He's also suspected to be the source of the weirder WMDs on the B2B market today." Before his wife could ask about the government connection, he added, "I know. Earlier, I found out Sunny and the boy are behind the attacks on Mexico. I wouldn't be surprised if this 'Old Ricky' also happens to be some kind of intel agent."

* * *

The interior of the Stryker was austere compared to the pimped-out rides that belonged to many of their other sales reps. Drebin 2012 wasn't known for flashiness; his time as an infiltrator within the militias had pushed him to use a high volume, low markup sales model in order to fleece as much money out of the self-proclaimed "patriots" as he could. His choice of vehicle was instead the M54, a truck his stepfather had taught him to drive.

Some Drebins, like 893, customized their Strykers with all sorts of appliances. By contrast, Campbell's lacked even the boiling vessel that had become standard issue in all armored vehicles after some former Praying Mantis personnel complained about being unable to brew up on the march. He wasn't one for luxury while at work, much to the detriment of the men and women who had commandeered his APC.

To keep their minds off how much better their comrades were faring, the occupants had turned to discussing real estate. It was common practice for their company's officers and executives to buy, develop, hold, and sell land for investment purposes. They knew when property values would drop due to violence or rise because of corporate influx; savvy people knew if ever there was an unexplained phenomenon, DREBINS was involved.

"I personally wouldn't buy anything in Virginia Beach," Keller warned. "Maybe it's changed, but that place was a fuckin' dump when I was stationed at Little Creek. Okay, so maybe my mom owns a few apartment complexes there, but my point stands, okay?"

"You were at Little Creek, Mr. Keller?" asked a Tengu second lieutenant. "Never figured you for a squid with how you talk. You started off in Construction, right? What were you, ACB-2?"

"No, I wasn't a damned Seabee," Keller denied. "Not enough explosions. I was assigned to my dad's old unit."

"How come you never talk about your father, sir?" Karnstein interrupted.

"He's dead, for one," answered Keller. Knowing the sergeant would offer her condolences and the lieutenant would ask for details, he preempted them both. "He was in New York during the Big Shell Incident. You do the math."

"Ouch," said the lieutenant. "Well, at least Arsenal Gear took out a bunch of those fucking leeches on Wall Street, so it wasn't all bad. Man, if only we'd had money to buy up the area hit back then, we'd be kings now!" Remembering Karnstein's presence, he added, "And queens, too."

"Manhattan's overpriced, sir," Keller stated. "You need a shitload of capital before you even think about buying, just like Hong Kong or Singapore. You know what my mom did instead? For the next few years afterwards, she bought and sold heating oil futures with the cash from Dad's death gratuity. She made a lot of money back in 2010 thanks to those blizzards, and again when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012."

The Stryker's occupants became aware of aircraft flying overhead when the sonic booms of their contracted air support shook the materiel stored on the APC's racks. The noise was unlike any they'd ever heard, almost as if the subcontractors were flying alien craft.

"Doesn't sound like they're flying Phosphori," Karnstein noted, referring to the XF-0002 Phosphorus fighter. Her sharp ears honed in on one engine in particular. "Huh. Longhair hired Delta Squadron to cover us."

* * *

No sooner had Sunny and Raiden reach the designated rendezvous point just outside a forest did a familiar car park next to theirs. A white-haired man in an armored Skull Suit stepped out, reminding his father of himself at Big Shell twenty-six years ago. How green he'd been back then, and what a horrible time for Rose to tell him the truth!

John must have violated every traffic law in Virginia to reach the area so quickly, but it didn't matter; he hadn't been caught. The boy had always been good at that; law enforcement in New York was still puzzled at how often their video cameras, gunshot detectors, armed UAVs, and other forms of surveillance suffered catastrophic failures. In fact, some of the people monitoring of the public seemed to have completely vanished from the face of the Earth. No one thought to check a dumping ground on a moon with a highly corrosive atmosphere in a different star system, which was understandable.

Having dispelled her power armor before returning to Earth, Sunny was dressed in her street clothes once again. "All righty then," she said, "let's see what Mister Drebin Man has for us."

"Only the finest antiques for my sister-in-crime," John replied in jest as he popped the trunk. "I got everything you need to get even. Rocks to phased plasma rifles, you name it, it's here."

Raiden couldn't resist a sad chuckle. "How the hell did you win a war against immortals?" he asked, patting his son on a shoulder. "Sunny I can understand; she's as crazy as the B&B Corps. What about you? You got something you never told us about?"

"Of course he's done things he hasn't told you about," said Sunny. "He _can't_, not without violating a dozen nondisclosure agreements—"

"_Half_-dozen," John corrected. "Just don't ask who Old Ricky really is until we meet him, okay? He doesn't need more people on his case." Something twitched in his mind, and he looked at Sunny. "I see you're feeling better. What did you use? The _Book_? Nanos? Healing armor? Life medicine? Life fruit? Potions?" With all of those guesses out of the way, he realized why she wasn't hurting. "No shooting your elephant gun today?"

"Why would I?" Sunny replied as she massaged her neck from shaking her head so much. "It's a piece of shit that recoils straight back. If I could take off that damned stock without damaging the wood, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Also, we're expecting contact tonight, you people are supposed to deliver my Patriot tomorrow evening, and your coworker's supposed to buy my debt later on for the gold I sold him."

"Oh, that's what I forgot!" John remembered. "One of Tomlinson's clients gave me her equipment earlier. She said to pass it on to someone I felt deserved it." He reached into one of the backpacks and began taking items out. "Take a look and help yourself."

Much of the equipment was currently of no use to Sunny. She had several suits of power armor stashed away; while she wouldn't mind owning another one, entering battle with an unfamiliar unit was suicide. The accessories didn't interest her; she didn't need a necklace that could instantly purify even the most polluted water … yet. Her attention was instead fixated on the black rifle case that John was unlocking.

"A Patriot with an entire conversion kit?" Sunny's enthusiasm waxed, only for rationality to return and crush it. "Damn it, I really shouldn't use it tonight," she said. "I already got enough firepower to wipe out the state. But I'll take it for now. We can swap later. How are you strapped, John?"

"Besides the merch, a Gun del Hell," the Drebin answered. For his father, he produced a katana. "Dad, you're officially an observer, but I thought you might want to be able to defend yourself out there. I got you one of my HF blades from the war. You want anything else, from a slingshot to a tactical nuke, I probably have it in the rucks."

"Why, thank you," said Raiden. He drew it, gave it a practice swing, and was impressed. "Forged by Steel Smith?"

"Nope," said John. "Django made it way back. He kept running outta inventory space, so he sold it to me." He produced another katana from a backpack and handed it to Sunny. "I went over to your house on the way here and grabbed one of the swords from A-seventeen. You sure you want this … 'Muramasa' _and_ Gram?" When Sunny nodded, he relented. "Okay, but you're carrying a lot already."

Distant engine noise reminded them that they were slacking off. They had come here to do a job, not chat and make an arms deal.

Sunny's face hardened at the sound. "Okay, fun's over. Here's the deal: There's a walker not far from here that isn't a pile of scrap metal yet—matter of fact, recon put it on the other side of this forest. Enemy infantry presence is expected to be low; these 'patriots' are in disarray thanks to today's bombings. The units that survived have more or less scattered in case we hit them again … which we likely will. Plans don't survive first contact with the enemy, so fuck 'em. Heads on swivels, activate Stealth Camo, and asses and elbows. Let's kill some fools."

* * *

Purchasing the Metal Gear as a parts kit had been a drain on the militia's coffers, but its proud owners deemed it worth every cent. Being forced by budget constraints to power it using a fuel engine was a necessary trade-off for the power they would be able to project, a deficiency they had planned to rectify once they had the funds to convert it to use those strange solar batteries sold by DREBINS. In the meantime, they could keep it running with anything from expensive jet fuel to mere garbage. Strange that a machine designed as a walking waste-to-energy incinerator could be a thing of beauty, but that was American ingenuity at work, and in less than a day, it would be put to work taking out the trash in the nation's capital.

It had survived the missile attacks by being out for a walk at the time. When its driver hurried back to camp after the explosions, he found his entire group wiped out. The bastards responsible for the cowardly attack had scored a direct hit on the fuel cisterns and ammo trailer, incinerating anyone who hadn't already been blown to bits.

Only later did the driver realize how wasteful his walk had been. Vehicles require energy to operate, and while OILIX had kept fuel cheap, prices meant nothing if the nearest gas station was out of range. Stranded, alone, and lost, the driver refused to abandon his Metal Gear and the supplies within. Instead, he stomped it over to the edge of an unnatural wood, an area that had been a fallow field a few months before, and began chopping down some trees for fuel.

He swung his axe at a hickory branch he'd felled, chopping the wood into smaller bits for better performance when he fed them to his walker's engine. The tough, unseasoned wood was far from optimal for emergency fuel, but when the alternatives were weeds or poisonous oleander, he considered himself blessed to find such a good power source to tide him over until he found a gas station.

A frozen gust blew, scattering the accumulated wood chips. Screaming his rage at nature for its coldness and lack of sympathy, he set out to salvage what he could, too lost in himself to take heed of the silhouettes of invisible people pointing guns at his back.

The last thing he saw before he became a human popsicle was a bright blue flash from behind.

"Kill confirmed," declared John, his Dark Gun still glowing from the shot. He placed an invisible foot on the body to leave no doubt. "Kinda underwhelming, if you ask me."

"Then you did it right," his father advised. His shimmering hands collected the dead man's axe. "This isn't supposed to be fun. Combat isn't a game. You do whatever you have to do to win, because winning is the only chance you have of leaving the battlefield alive."

"Or undead," added Sunny. "I set up the cam while you were busy. We're recording right now. You two wearing eye protection?" When the men answered in the affirmative, she pointed her Solar Gun in the Metal Gear's direction. "Good. Frost lens, full power, Infinite battery. Firing."

* * *

A freak temperature drop not far away, Shayda and Faiza noted from their command track. Satellite images had recorded the presence of a light Metal Gear sheltering somewhere in the affected area, with its last known coordinates being at the edge of an oak-hickory forest that had popped out of nowhere one day.

Perhaps there was some truth to the rumors, thought the Demon of Kandahar. Maybe the woods were haunted by an angry spirit. They certainly weren't natural, having skipped so many stages of succession.

Even preoccupied, Shayda could sense hatred in the flashpoints of the localized blizzards. Intercepted radio transmissions among the opposition out there painted a picture of the defenders growing frantic and incoherent. There was a phantom systematically butchering them, someone with a long-standing feud against their cause.

"Take a look at this, Faze," Shayda called, beckoning her subordinate and friend to her console. The general pointed at the files their air support had relayed to them. "You remember how you asked about Fernandez being the Bad Egg? He's sent us information on _her_ identity."

"Her?" Faiza asked. She may have arched an eyebrow, but it was difficult to tell behind her helmet. "Everyone's been looking in the wrong places all these years."

"Quite," agreed Shayda. "She's one of Fernandez's most talented section leaders. I expected more of a chav, but she's apparently far more organized. She's an international terrorist with links to execs in our own corporation … and our former opposition."

"Mm-hmm." Faiza read the titles of the other open windows. "What exactly are you working on?"

"I'm updating the private wiki," the general answered. "Anyway, our mystery woman has a name: Sunny Gurlukovich. Lori's apparently known since Sunday, but she's had no time to enter the data or even mention it to us."

A picture of the Bad Egg filled the screen. Faiza couldn't believe her eyes. "This is a _woman_? I've seen men with more curves—scratch that, I've seen _washboards_ curvier than her." Inwardly, she retched at the images of the decadent blobs of lard she'd executed and how they invariably begged to be spared before she tortured them to death. "She looks like Octopus with that face and short hair, and what's with her name? Gurlukovich? That sounds more like a patronym for a Russian man than a proper surname. Sunny? Change that 'U' into an 'O', and you have a boy's name."

"Right," said Shayda. "It gets worse. If you recognize the name, Gurlukovich also initiated the NARC gum arabic scandal at their New England facility. Affected Saudi and Sudanese families included several influential mullahs and imams; they took issue with her interference and issued _fatwas_ on her life. Simultaneously, many financial institutions had their values plummet, and they hired professionals to kill her."

The tale, along with the other open windows on the screen, jogged Faiza's memory. "Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that. Didn't she launch an epic battle in South Ashfield before retreating to her apartment to make her last stand? How'd she survive?"

Shayda shrugged. "The opposition forces were entirely depleted," she stated. "In desperation, they resorted to using a PETN bomb on the flat complex to kill her, but she was already long gone. The business world placed her on every employment blacklist for being a whistleblower and harbinger of corporate doom—which means they took issue with her for not dying. Hitmen continued to pursue her until she flew to Saudi Arabia and massacred an entire town on her own."

_Difficult as it was to imagine that the firebrand imam would choose such an insignificant little border town for his base of operations, it was even more unbelievable that the Metal Gear sent to stop the slaughter lasted only five seconds against Fernandez's gang. The REGINA had been completely obliterated by what appeared to be a theater-level gun of some sort, an artillery piece that made the general salivate with its destructive capabilities. She'd have to contact Fernandez later to see if they could arrange for a demonstration._

_But that would have to wait. Right now, she had to move in with her forces to secure the area. Fernandez had not wanted credit for his actions and neither did she. However, leading the world to believe that General Longhair backed the operation would boost Combat Support's prestige for killing a terrorist supporter and send the message that DREBINS took care of its clients. Plus, it would drive a further wedge between the Sunni extremists running Saudi Arabia and the Shia extremists of Iran, even though she had little interaction with the former and nothing but cold hatred for the latter._

"What about those links you mentioned?" Faiza interrupted.

"Hmm?" It took a few seconds for Shayda to remember where she'd left off. "Oh, right. Gurlukovich is a member of Philanthropy and the de facto leader of its armed wing after Snake's death. She knows the cyborg ninja who held you and your troops at bay outside the microwave corridor. The son of that cyborg is Drebin 2012, so she's a friend of his as well. Otacon-Soul are the company who code our most vital software and are headed by her uncle. Admiral Mei Ling is one of her family's friends … as well as one of _our_ informants. Drebin 893, one of our illustrious company's founders, is one of her contacts and used to be her driver during the rampage in this state during the summer of 2021. She's one of Cruz's range mates because Van Nguyen introduced them to each other."

"She's the Russian girl we keep hearing about," Faiza realized. "This is who Lori's been trying to recruit all this time?"

"Yeah. Lori interviewed at her home on Sunday and hired her as a brass shoveler."

"Why was Lori at her home in the first place? Even top-level managers have to come to the company for an interview if they want to be hired. Gurlukovich gets special treatment just because she knows people?"

Shayda sighed. "Of course not, Faze. Lori's good at multitasking; she must've thought she could ride along on a delivery to save time and money. From what I understand, it worked too well; Drebin 893 was there to brief them on their next mission, Lori was able to interview her and get an item code for that MMO we always play, and she learned Gurlukovich knows how to brew tea the way she likes it."

"Hell of a lot of work wasted on getting revenge on Philanthropy," Faiza commented. "If we'd known Gurlukovich would join us willingly, we could've given the finger to Snake a lot sooner. But even animals have the capacity to mourn. I don't like how she targets mourners at funerals. No self-restraint or sense of honor."

"I know. Lori thinks Gurlukovich doesn't have the discipline or physical ability to become a FROG. Then again, Vamp said I was too old and you were too inexperienced, yet we proved him wrong. Still, no one knows if she's interested in joining Combat Support at all."

Faiza knew what her superior was planning. "You're not seriously thinking of recruiting her for ourselves, are you, Shay? Please tell me you don't want that psycho anywhere near us."

"I'm sorry," Shayda apologized. "The lass is too connected for this to be a coincidence. I have no doubt she's pursuing an agenda of her own and has been indirectly manipulating us for years, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime."

* * *

The trio had lost track of camps they'd dismantled that night. There were too many isolated stragglers and patrols to get an accurate count of who belonged to what, and in all honesty, they didn't care. They were there to sweep the extremists and their ideology out of Virginia; numbers of kills meant little.

Many of the militias they'd targeted reacted in a predictable manner. Believing themselves under attack by a vastly superior force, the militants would attempt to break out of the encirclement by adopting a triangular formation with a wide base facing the direction of their advance. They'd pop smoke to their flanks and rear to conceal themselves while the front line dumped as much firepower forward as it could. Then, once the front-liners were empty, they'd go to ground and reload while their comrades bounded ahead and picked up the slack. The process would be repeated until the unit believed itself clear of the encirclement. It was a classic counter-ambush maneuver, one their attackers knew well.

The tactic may have worked against the feds, but the defenders were facing a pair of OGs and their advisor. To these veteran killers, picking off false patriots was varmint hunting or pest control. With a Patriot SAW's cyclic fire pinning their front, the defenders never noticed the invisible gunslinger with a magical pistol—Solar _or_ Dark Gun—that posed the true threat. A few homing shots from a Stalker frame would sanitize the area of all hostiles in a matter of seconds. The attackers were, in effect, countering a counter-ambush by using a box ambush technique that the militias themselves favored. It was best not to think too much on the matter.

Raiden provided overwatch with the Patriot while the others finished off the survivors, growing impatient at their pace. Virginia remained full of scattered warbands of authoritarians and self-proclaimed patriots, but there would be no more battles that Monday. It was only a few minutes from midnight; the terrorist hunt would have to wind down if the trio wanted to reach their destination in time.

"It's a sad thing that your adventures have ended here, little one," said John. He poked the frozen baby's corpse with La Vie en Rose once again in front of its dying mother's tearful, bloodied eyes. "But this is fate. Better luck next life, and thanks for the blood. God, I missed that smell!"

A few meters away, Sunny used her swords to grant release to the mortally wounded fighter she'd taken prisoner. He'd fought well enough to last all of ten seconds against her in melee, an anomaly when most of her opponents died with the first swing. She'd brought him down by cutting his legs off a few inches below the knees with a horizontal sweep from Gram, followed up by amputating his arms with quick downward blows from both blades. His shock did the rest of her work for her.

Sunny stabbed him in the heart with Muramasa and held it there until the man had run out of blood. Effortlessly yanking the katana away from his body, she touched it to the ground and absorbed the blood that had spilled onto the dirt.

If the blood of patriots and tyrants refreshed the tree of liberty, theirs was herbicide. Men like him were too selfish to be patriots and too inept to be tyrants themselves, having to rely on charismatic strongmen to do their work for them. They would be willing pawns to aspiring dictators as long as they wrapped themselves in the flag and disguised their attempts to oppress outsiders as returning to traditional values or for the sake of the children. Virginia did not deserve to have their blood leaching into its soil once again when it could instead be flooding the streets of Washington to serve as a grisly reminder against rebellion and corruption alike.

But the world had strayed from its original path. People had put too much stock in utopias and paradises—pipe dreams—to let go of their sunk costs. They couldn't let the world be; after all, they weren't the ones footing the bill for their bliss.


	14. Poisoned Minds

Patriot Day was finally here. Despite being an annual event, it felt like an eternity had passed since the last one. Every day, more and more patriots fell at the hands of the Morris regime or their terrorist auxiliary "volunteers." Many of the weaker-willed patriots were already turning away in fear of further bombings.

Units slated to raid the supply depots at Norfolk and Richmond had been ordered to abort their missions. While their sympathizers on the inside could still smuggle goods out, the flow of materiel was predicted to slow to a trickle, further hampering the war effort. Fortunately, patriots and freedom fighters around the world could count on a crooked defense contractor with no true loyalties to any government, a vendor without borders.

Their services wouldn't be cheap, but by definition, private enterprise was more efficient than government production. After all, when governments screwed up, they could cover their asses by changing the law to benefit themselves. Businesses normally did not have that benefit unless they were a certain world-spanning corporation.

In this case, cost meant nothing. The Sheriff had finally cracked and needed to be removed from office immediately. Kinney believed that DREBINS wasn't on their side and had wiped out the camps just to lure him into a trap. He'd also said that the mega corp was responsible for wiping out the posse assigned to shakedown duty on Sunday.

The first charge made no sense. Why on Earth would DREBINS massacre thousands of its customers just to kill one man? For the world's largest conglomerate to target an insignificant man spoke of the sheriff's narcissism. No American was worth that much effort, not even President Morris. If they were specifically trying to assassinate him, they would have raided his home and shot him, not waste a pricey Tomahawk.

There was no doubt as to the truthfulness of the second accusation; the sixty-strong group of volunteers had been completely wiped out. While the dead posse was _officially_ tasked with bringing the killers of one the Sheriff's buddies from the Corps to justice, corruption within the Armistead Sheriff's Department was rampant and volunteering for checkpoint duty was a lucrative way to line one's own pockets.

Civil asset forfeiture was a legal, time-honored fundraising tactic for LEOs throughout the country; in Virginia's case, every last cent confiscated was distributed to law enforcement. To make things sweeter, unlike most other torts and crimes, the burden of proof rested with the accused to prove themselves innocent—and there was no such thing as innocence in a court of law, only shades of guilt. The public was largely against it for those reasons, but a few claims that shaking down drivers at gunpoint was for the good of children would quickly change minds.

It was rare for victims to fight back, but the idiots in that posse had chosen to blockade a highway used extensively by DREBINS. Even worse, it seemed they'd picked on a contingent of soldiers from Revenge Services, one of the company's black ops branches. When even the more mainstream Combat Support department advertised omnicide as one of its services, there was damned good reason to fear an even more sinister unit.

Instead of apologizing and begging DREBINS not to murder them all, Kinney had sent a mass e-mail to militia leaders around the country, warning them not to do business with the corporation. The Sheriff was endangering the vision, fomenting distrust within the ranks, and alienating their best supplier. He and his cronies had to go, _fast_.

Luckily for all involved, the perfect solution had been under their noses the whole time: In Virginia, cities were independent of counties. Armistead was a _de facto_ city, even if was legally only an incorporated town within its namesake county. An unwritten code among local law enforcement was that any movement to obtain a charter for the city was to be crushed with maximum force, as breaking off the city from the county would require establishing a separate sheriff's office, thus creating more competition for fines and bribes.

Kinney had taken advantage of the county's ongoing state of emergency and deputized thousands upon thousands of militia volunteers for his posses while in office. Neither the Sheriff's Department nor he had the money to pay the salaries of the men temporarily serving under his command, but he was a chief law enforcement officer in a position capable of purchasing equipment at steep discounts. The militias "donated" money to his office for him to spend on arming his deputies; if those deputies lived long enough to rotate out of service, they took their weapons back home, where they could be added to the armories or sold for massive profit.

His choice to press so many outsiders into service was now going to bite him in the ass. The militias only needed sheriffs sympathetic to their cause to help funnel gear; they did not specifically need _him_. No one wanted his job for fear of being targeted by the local psychopath known as the Bad Egg, but if the city of Armistead could be broken off from the county and chartered, no one would need to deal with Charles Kinney.

The deputies planning to defect would have to back Armistead's pro-charter bloc, which would also leave them exposed to Kinney's loyalists. On the plus side, if they played their cards right, they'd have the gratitude of the city, granting them a major foothold within striking distance of Washington, DC.

_Sic semper tyrannis_? Fuck yeah.

* * *

The masked spook in his mid-fifties drew the charging handle of his MP5SD5 to the rear and released it. None of that "HK slap" showboating for him; it wasn't worth the potential stress on the submachine gun's parts. He'd accumulated his wealth by making things, not breaking them.

The platoons he was hunting were composed of idiots from out of town. Of all the ways they could have possibly screwed up, they'd set up their mortar positions east of the Anacostia River. That area was a war zone even on the best days; if outsiders thought being heavily-armed in the ghetto would protect them, they were seriously delusional.

"Yo, Ricky," his partner began, "you serious 'bout this? They rollin' deep, old man."

"There's only forty of them," answered Ricky. "They'll be no problem for you. Go on and start up the gang war, then get to the rally point and prep it for our fellow Apostles from Armistead."

"Yeah? Who they send us?" asked the partner. The native of the eastern part of the city reached into his backpack and removed a Face Camo mask. Donning it, he guessed, "Cipher and his crew?"

Ricky switched his stealth camouflage on. "If you mean Delta Squadron, no, not exactly. I got a call from Fernandez not long ago. He's flying top cover for the DREBINS column coming in from the west."

"The one from the base keeping them fools at Green Bank in check? Shit, that's where the boss FROG's at. Bitch be crazy!"

"The Faithless Frog," Ricky supplied, masking his emotions. "Yeah, I've heard she's nuts, but Big John tells me she's mellow as long as she gets her iced tea and games. She's signed off a lot of our gun orders. Anyhoo, get going, kiddo. We got a lot of work to do."

Many arms shipments from Shenandoah County to the rest of Virginia were indeed approved by a Colonel Lori Tomlinson. The campus DREBINS had in that area, established as a cover to monitor the National Radio Quiet Zone just a stone's throw to the west, was slightly better known to anti-government militias as an auxiliary supply depot from which their firepower originated. That the company also sold to the government was rarely discussed; the militants believed the half-lie that it was being done so sympathetic elements and infiltrators could operate under less suspicion.

They weren't wrong, Old Ricky reminded himself. DREBINS was walking a fine edge in prolonging conflicts for its own benefit. The business had gotten its puppets into the White House after framing Morris' rivals as far worse alternatives, and before that, it had manipulated Eiji's predecessor into ruining the country so it could step in to save the day. If the company could part disorganized warbands from their money, of course it was going to try to appear sympathetic to their causes.

DREBINS' connections had also played a role in establishing gangs in several countries. The teenagers and young adults comprising the lower ranks were largely ignorant of the corporate influence on their cliques, and for the most part, they didn't care. As long as they kept receiving sanitized materiel and medical-quality drugs from their sharply-dressed suppliers, it was all good.

At the same time, the huge multinational also supplied government forces, first responders, and law-abiding citizens. Almost everybody was armed in case the other side made a move, but no one was willing to take their eyes off the sight picture to care about the invisible businesspeople fleecing them.

Ricky considered his gang lucky. They weren't pawns in the grand conspiracy; they were among its creators. A few direct links to some of the other major players made them privy to classified intel not even the President himself was cleared to receive.

But that was a story for another time, and there was little time to waste. Dawn was only some hours away; the enemy was already setting up fighting positions within Washington. If they were allowed to entrench themselves, it would be a bitch to root them out and kill them. They could not be allowed to set up bunkers anywhere in Northwest.

Holding the sector was crucial to DREBINS' continued existence in DC; after all, Northwest was where the firm received its greatest returns. It was the largest quadrant in Washington, home to a lot of influential (and wealthy) people who were either valued clients or indebted to the company. If it were to fall—and without his intervention, it would—years of manipulation would have been for naught.

Difficult as the bunkers would be, a more immediate threat loomed in eastern half of the capital. Artillery teams in the area were deployed ahead of the main force to provide fire support for their allies. Once the federal government refused their demands, they would shell the city to punish both the leaders who dared to restrict their privileges and the lazy primates of the east who chose to remain loyal to the regime.

The shimmering silhouette made his way to his first target, a barrack buster squad at a vacant lot, and shouldered his submachine gun. These men were likely of the shoot-and-scoot type; improvised mortar tubes made from old propane cylinders were only good for one use. They probably had others cached elsewhere, but it would take time to get them into action.

Improvised mortars were notoriously inaccurate. Ricky briefly wondered at the tube's purpose; there were no government targets within its effective range, not even a National Guard installation. Its projectile wouldn't even reach the Anacostia, so fire support was not a reason. The only probable targets would be the apartment complexes, which housed Morris loyalists who would most likely oppose the protests.

_Never mind._

Judging from their planned pentagon-shaped security perimeter, the team had experience with the weapon and knew how likely it was to suffer a catastrophic failure. For now, though, they were relaxing in the back of their van, drunk off their asses and waiting for the signal to load and fire. How generous of them to make their own deaths look like an accident.

Ricky fine-tuned his aim on the nearest enemy and double-tapped the militant in the head. Before the other four men could react, he methodically shot each of them, the loudest noise being the sound of his MP5's bolt cycling. After he confirmed their deaths, the invisible man reached for one of his timed satchel charges, placed it in the van, and shut the doors.

_One down, who the fuck knows how many left_.

* * *

The two cars sped along the unlit, deserted rural road, their drivers giving the finger to both safety and Death as they raced eastward. In the lead vehicle, the white-haired woman kept her right hand on the wheel as she launched grenades from her Gun del Sol out the window.

"What am I, ten?" asked Sunny. "Fuck no! I'm not Otacon's daughter; I'm a Gurlukovich, not an Emmerich. He doesn't have what it takes to go the extra mile. All the crap that's happened to him, and he just takes it like a bitch."

"And you're the craziest bitch in history," Raiden muttered. "Sunny, I'm mad at them, too, but there's a point when you cross the line between wanting vengeance and just killing because you're batshit insane. Cut a scientist who abducts and experiments on kids in half, sure, I can probably understand that. Throw his own kids in the air to stick a bayonet in them? That's going too far. You and John are walking a fine line."

It was futile to reason with Sunny on how much mercy she would show the families of Area 51 personnel. She held all of them accountable for imprisoning her at the base and using her as a bargaining chip, along with what they'd done to Jack. While her rescuer had been able to find it in his mechanical heart to forgive them to some degree, her anger still burned fresh after nearly two decades.

Sunny's face hardened as she launched another grenade. "You wanna know something, Jack? Snake and Uncle Hal were supposed to be captured and executed by the Patriots' remnants after we upped FOXALIVE. Me, they wanted to turn into a brainwashed pawn, and you know what? According to Saint Germain, the same thing happened to me in a past life."

"You seriously trust a man who calls himself a time traveler?"

"He's not the only one I know," Sunny answered before safing her gun. "Trinity's a legendary gunslinger from the future. He got busted stealing bread crumbs and ended up changing the past for the better. Closer to home, we've got the Koppelthorn Engine and the _Book of Memories_ to let us peek into other realities and maybe change our own. Not to mention our enemies using the Doomsday Phenomenon and slipping through time … it's the same principle used in the Fool Card.

"But fuck that," she continued, reholstering her pistol. "As I was saying, kids shouldn't get a pass just because they're kids. If people keep treating them like they're all innocent little cherubim, what atrocities _can't_ they justify as long as they say they're doing it for the children? Try to introduce some logic to stop their emotional appeals sometime. Say the costs aren't worth the benefits. See how long it takes before you get the standard 'if even one life is saved' or 'to hell with reason' speech. I should know; I've banned a lot of those types before, killed even more."

"You don't need to remind me," spat Raiden. "I think your teenage rampages made your views clear."

Clear to themselves, perhaps. At the end of the First Liberian Civil War, Raiden was placed in a relief center, where well-meaning dumbasses tried to adopt him before learning he was damaged goods. The Patriots got to him and subjected him to a life of misery, which, in retrospect, was a lighter fate than some of his former comrades: At least _he_ didn't have foster parents who murdered him or treated him like a slave.

A few veterans of the Small Boy Unit survived a war only to die at the hands of their woefully inadequate adopters, resulting in absolutely no changes to the adoption system. More died at the hands of criminals, randomly killed by gang initiation rituals, robberies, and cops. Some committed suicide, unable to bear the past.

These sob stories almost always earned sympathy from audiences. Sunny's tale, on the other hand, only ever earned her more grief. She'd lost her mother, then Naomi, and finally Snake, but because she was a white American, she should have "checked her privilege" instead of mourning the dead, as there were countless refugees who would have killed to only have lost three loved ones. Some of her happiest memories involved technology or cooking; the know-it-alls were aghast that a little girl had never seen the outside world until she was six. MREs, Hide-Chan ramen, and Regain 24 energy drinks were the only alternatives to eggs on the _Nomad_; admitting that meals on the aircraft consisted mostly of processed foods brought them to CPS' attention.

Eventually, Otacon slipped up one too many times. No one still living knew what had been the authorities' last straw, but whatever the pretext, CPS raided their home and tried to remove a teenager from the only family she had left. So began Sunny's revenge against her enemies, a war that disregarded any and all mitigating factors. She spared no one, not even children used as human shields.

"Well, yeah," said Sunny, chuckling. She softened at the memories. "Man, I sure wish I still had some Moss-pattern fatigues that fit. You never go hungry wearing those in the sunlight, you know? Too bad you're eating glucose, glucose, and more glucose all the time. Really makes you hyper."

* * *

_Light AA gun destroyed. Oops._

Old Ricky seethed at his latest kills. He'd wiped out an AA gun crew; their position on the roof and choice of mounting indicated they weren't providing overwatch for ground forces. However, their weapon was an M2 Browning, the venerable fifty-caliber machine gun also known as the Ma Deuce. It was more often used as an anti-personnel or riot control weapon; in the old days, the sight of one was often enough for law enforcement to restore order.

He'd just destroyed one by accident. John Browning have mercy on him, because his gang wouldn't. Even if they didn't want it, the heavy machine gun would have fetched fourteen thousand dollars in the old days, the figure being the unit replacement cost to the government. With the repeal of the NFA in response to the Battle of Armistead, prices had skyrocketed even after DREBINS started producing it for the consumer market. Demand was that high for a masterpiece.

_There will always be others._ Those were Cheryl Morris' words of encouragement from when they were working together at Cartland and Mason Investigations. She wasn't confirmed as a clairvoyant or psychic back then, but her words were comforting all the same. That the statement also meant there would always be a war somewhere … not so good. But fuck that; he was Old Ricky and bringing death to others was his life.

* * *

In a bygone era, the First Lady worked under her maiden name, Cheryl Mason. A veteran of the covert wars in New England since July 2000, she and Douglas Cartland were forced to incorporate their detective agency in a last-ditch effort to limit their liability because of a doomsday cult's plot to bankrupt them through lawsuits. Once Maine approved their charter, the duo had no choice to grow their company in order to compensate for the double taxation they faced.

Cher was everywhere in those lean years, working tirelessly to keep themselves afloat. Fueled by a vendetta against all religious fanatics after the Order murdered her adoptive father and al-Qaeda killed thousands more fourteen months later, the teenager was responsible for hunting down countless low-ranking lunatics in the War on Terror. She always avoided terrorist leaders, wary of possible Patriot intervention.

Less well-known was that she'd used her powers to enrich herself. Her ability to see into the future came in handy in the casinos of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Stock exchanges were more susceptible to feedback, but she made a fortune there as well.

Then, on a vacation back to Silent Hill, she met her future husband when they bumped into each other while killing the town's monsters. Eiji was an optimistic Force Recon Marine born into a prestigious Texan family of cattle-and-gold magnates; she, a bitter self-made millionaire who had no one left in the world. He came from a line of vampire hunters dating back to his great-great-grandfather; she was Princess Heart and had killed God, just like her father before her. They gave each other corny nicknames: "Eiji," for his fascination with Japan and initials; "Cher," as a shortened form of her name and a homophone for "dear" in another language.

"Sorry for how I acted earlier," Cher apologized as she sat down, "but your client's trouble. Celia Porter—or Fortner, I should say—is a dark cultist. She's the head of With Light, a group that wants to crown the Dark Lord so God can be the ultimate good."

Tomlinson shrugged before glancing over the First Lady's shoulder at the materials headed for the Promenade. "Meh. Paradise-seeking shitheads. Hate to lose a valuable client, but not much we can do but blast 'em. When do you think we should take her out?"

"Don't," suggested the First Lady. When Tomlinson raised a brow, she elaborated, "Of all your choices, you can extract the most profit from her if you let her be. One day, she'll bite off more than she can chew. Maybe she'll kill a doppelganger of someone's girlfriend, or she'll get sacrificed by one of her own. I give her about a year from now. Just keep your mouth shut, sit tight, and look pretty."

"Kinda impossible, that last one," joked Tomlinson. They shared a chuckle, and she continued, "You said Celia's trying to crown the Dark Lord. She's gotta have candidates for that. Any leads on who that might be?"

"She ever seem interested in someone?" asked Cher. She scooted her chair in as a precaution; seconds later, one of Tomlinson's people walked toward the Solarium carrying a wooden plank. For all her precognition, the First Lady was rather poor in sanity, using the third floor's central hall as a meeting spot with the DREBINS colonel.

"People born during the eclipse of '99, like that Italian pyromaniac and Irina Blinova's little brother. You've heard of him, right? Dmitrii the Mirror? Also, Gunner Cruz's son, but he's only eighteen."

Thundering footsteps from the offices to the west shook the building and reminded the women that the Shepherds were helping out with the fortification instead of sheltering at their own residence. The White House was far more defensible than Number One Observatory Circle; Eiji's shield added another layer of external defense. If power armor alone could shake the floor, however, then the _internal_ defenses were still lacking.

"China Room secure?" Tomlinson suddenly asked, breaking off from her previous subject. She was referring to the ground floor porcelain collection: So much fragile material and a damned chandelier in a small room was simply asking for trouble.

"Since last week," said Cher. "Doesn't take a psychic to know what could happen."

"But it does take common sense," Tomlinson countered, "which doesn't seem to exist anymore."

"Common sense is overrated," the First Lady dismissed. "It's just a feel-good term for groupthink. You're from Maine, too; you should know this."

A muted thud from the north cut Tomlinson off before she could voice a response; she nodded instead. The ex-FROG's trained ears homed in on the President's footsteps after he'd closed the greenhouse's transparent blast shield. She noticed he'd made a quick detour to the storerooms to grab something before coming back to the hall; judging by the change in his steps, Eiji was carrying a statue of the same sort seen downstairs.

"Yeah, sure," said Tomlinson. A glance over the First Lady's shoulder revealed a miniature statue of an angel being brought out. "You don't use HOTS anymore, do you? Why'd you switch to statues? Besides the connection to the Order, I mean."

"Haloes of the Sun don't heal you," the President explained as he placed the palm-sized figurine on the women's table. "Oh sure, they're good for sending you back to your last contact with them if you get yourself killed, but they don't _regenerate_ you." To Tomlinson, he suggested, "Go ahead and touch it. It's perfectly safe."

Seeing no reason to distrust the President more than usual, Tomlinson gently tapped the stone figurine's head. Holy light suffused her, instantly removing all weariness, wounds, and grime from her body. Simultaneously, every imperfection in her clothes and armor was repaired. As quickly as it had come, the light disappeared, leaving the ex-FROG with her mouth hanging open.

"Nice, isn't it?" Eiji pulled up a chair and sat down before storing the little statue into one of his cubes. "You can find the originals in Romania—Wygol City has lots of 'em. I heard a few of them are being shipped to a Japanese mountain village, too. Anyway, they're normally the size of a room. The easy part is miniaturizing them while keeping all the features completely intact."

"And the hard part?" questioned Tomlinson.

"Keeping them out of the wrong hands." Eiji Morris slouched in his chair. "Have I ever told either of you about what Cousin Jules and I fought in that damned castle?"

* * *

The junior Drebin felt sick to his stomach. Before leaving Combat Support for his current position, he'd seen action in Afghanistan under Colonel Zia. Not even the most unrepentant war criminal deserved the fate awaiting the marchers in DC. When both Zia and her superior, Esfahani, were called to deal with a situation, order would be restored quickly on the basis of their reputation alone.

There was more than enough room for all the POWs that would be taken; whether those two had it in their black hearts to leave any survivors in Washington was a different matter. He'd been there when Colonel Zia personally ripped pages from Qurans to use as tinder for burning an entire village alive, and he'd suppressed the memories of how the visiting General Esfahani tortured her enemies. Only a fool would disregard the tales of how Kandahar province in Afghanistan was turned from a restive Taliban stronghold to a peaceful necropolis.

Any prisoners were to be sent to Arizona's infamous Camp Zulu. The prison was always kept at full capacity; whenever an influx of inmates would lead to overcrowding, there would conveniently be a riot to be brutally suppressed. Once stability returned, there would be a mass execution of the inmates deemed responsible for inciting violence, which would invariably lead to the discovery that their friends and family on the outside were conspiring with them, which propelled a cycle of further sweeps and police actions.

In truth, Zulu was established as a reminder of how post-War Economy America treated the Haven Troopers. After Liquid Ocelot's death, command of the _Outer Haven_ and all of its assets devolved to the highest-ranking survivor, Captain Lori Tomlinson of the FROGs' elite Alpha Company. As Tomlinson had coldly gunned down several American troops on the Volta and the _Missouri_ and was a retired Marine NCO herself, the military tribunals showed none of the _Haven_'s personnel an iota of mercy.

To appease the families of the dead troops, every last FROG was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life in prison. As a further insult, the amphibious warfare specialists were to be kept in a tent camp in the desert. They were to endure the sweltering heat of day and freezing cold of night without adequate shelter.

The young Drebin jolted out of his thoughts as a deathly chill passed through him, a reminder that the story of their escape was for a different time. He knew he should have taken 2012's advice to stay far away from the nanomachine software that allowed for memory transfer. Learning all those skills from other people's experiences wasn't worth seeing the horrors caused by the sick minds of the six leaders of the prison break. If this was what it took to be a badass, screw it; he'd rather learn from VR programs—and he _hated_ VR.

Just a few meters away, the supply convoys had unloaded their cargo at Dulles and were poised to head into the capital. Soon, they'd be deployed to protect the embassies of nations that were already poised to condemn the American reaction, regardless of the outcome. He exhaled, his breath visible in the freezing air. The coldness hadn't been a figment of his imagination after all.

* * *

The gangs that had established checkpoints in eastern DC were neither enemies nor friends. They were pawns, and if they wanted to extract a toll from a Drebin, they would be lucky to leave with the clothes on their backs.

As with most people, the bangers thought of Drebins as charismatic, well-dressed men and women who could perform magic tricks like turning apples into hand grenades. They doubted the blond man in the strange sneaking suit was one of their salesmen until he pulled an olive drab ammo can out of nowhere. His identity confirmed, all thoughts of petty theft disappeared, replaced by a realization that they could extort even more money from him.

In their infinite wisdom, they chose to stick him up. He calmly set the can on the ground, drew his fancy flashlight, and spun around. Before any of his enemies could react, eleven men lay dead, sliced in half by the dark energies of his Gun del Hell.

They were neutrals, but more importantly, they weren't allies. That had been reason enough to cut them all down. The gang would have been lucky to leave with the clothes on their backs because they couldn't be allowed to leave at all.

"And this is why you don't mess with DREBINS," John dully remarked. The Dark Gun disappeared back into the shadows as if it had never existed. Icy air reached his face, turning his breath visible. "Toll paid."

"Good work," answered Sunny's disembodied voice. "We scouted the route to the depot—all clear. Nearest we'll get to any fighting is three blocks to a stash house raid running parallel."

"Minimal danger," John opined. "Okay, that's good. Anything I should know about?"

"A few disabled mortar tubes," Sunny replied. The Philanthropist flickered out of stealth for a second after her foot bumped into the curb. Alarmed at the occurrence, she immediately cloaked herself again as part of running a hasty diagnostic on her unit. Stealth camo wasn't supposed to deactivate on impact! "Burnt-out vehicles nearby. Oh, and a _bunch_ of dead bodies. Old Ricky must've started the party without us."

"Can't explain why there'd be mortars this side of the Anacostia," mused John. "It's not like they can hit anything from here. You'd get better returns shelling Maryland."

Continual gunfire and shouting in the distance proved that there would be no one to keep order when the riots on the west side began. Despite many police stations having been overrun and looted while most available officers were on the streets trying (and failing) to suppress the gang wars, there was little chance of martial law being declared. Even if National Guard personnel could navigate through the war zones to report for muster at their bases, they'd have to fight through thousands of armed locals before heading west to disperse an even _more_ powerful and cohesive force.

"I know," said Sunny. She dropped out of stealth as she retrieved her car keys. An armored woman driving an old sedan was less suspicious than an _invisible_ woman anywhere. "What are they gonna bomb, the locals? Ain't our business." Her mood suddenly darkened. "Listen, I dropped your dad off so we could talk in private—and we have a pressing issue that needs to be solved _right the fuck now_."

The frozen streets Sunny had cleared wouldn't be free of combat for much longer. If they didn't move soon, the secured route would revert to local gang control. However, the Philanthropist almost never needed other people's help in fixing her own problems, which made her demand all the more alarming.

"What is it?" John asked, making a quick check of their surroundings to make sure no one was eavesdropping. The icy landscape was thawing, but he figured they had time.

"It's your dad," Sunny explained. "He's been asking questions almost nonstop since he showed up. At first they were all about normal things—well, normal for us, anyway—but he's been drifting towards getting higher-level classified intel from us. Right before I let him into the depot, he asked about who Old Ricky really is even after you told him not to."

This was not good. Old Ricky had a direct line to the First Lady from his days at Cartland and Mason. If the public ever got wind of his ties to the current administration or his true identity, the White House would be linked to global terrorism. Mobs of idiot vigilantes were going to wipe out the Dark Apostles in retaliation if the gang's existence ever came to light.

"Yeah, I noticed," said John. "He's being a lot nosier than usual. Tell him we'll meet Ricky at the end of today. In the meantime, maybe we can distract him, make him forget. Do we have an excuse for not using the teleporter?"

"No," Sunny scoffed. "It'll get us where we need to go if we don't mind reappearing in the thick of things, and since when do we care about overwhelming odds?" They still ran a slight risk of compromising Old Ricky if anyone could be bothered to look at the property records. What most people tended to forget about military cyborgs was that they were walking Wi-Fi hotspots; Raiden would have no difficulty tracing Ricky's identity as soon as he saw the address.

"Okay, that's not too bad," said John. "The other side has a pretty big garage connected to the house. I can arrange for a van to pick us up over there. When we get to the depot, head for the cache while I make the call. Do something to stall him—I think it's time that place got its ammo supplies restocked. After we warp over there, I drive, you ride shotgun, and my dad gets to chill with the stuff in the back."

"Won't the fog affect him?" Sunny pointed out. Not being a cyborg herself, she had no idea whether Raiden's current body was hardened against Toluca Lake-type fog moving in on DC. "Our air units are shielded from paranormal jamming and Milla's body is centuries more advanced than anything Voight makes, but what about your dad?"

John shrugged. "Didn't do a thing when we went up to Silent Hill. His body'll probably be fine; I just hope he doesn't go Ripper on whatever we run into. And why'd you mention Carmilla? Please, _please_ tell me _she's_ not here."

"We'd better start moving again," evaded Sunny. Her outline waved an arm at the road ahead, indicating the thaw. In the distance, the charred hulk of a pickup truck blocked off an alleyway not far from their destination. No further inspection was needed to identify it as a militia vehicle; the destroyed tube in the bed marked it as a mortar carrier that had experienced a few premature detonations courtesy of Old Ricky.

_Beaucoup replacement orders on technicals later on, _John noted as the pair made their way back to their own vehicles. _Auto industry's getting a boom come fall with early winter echoes. Remember to do some research on which kinds these idiots prefer. Or ask Karnstein; she should know._

* * *

Morning in the city was more smoky and dust-choked than usual. Reports from the east side indicated that the ghettoes were aflame from a major gang war. Public safety was overwhelmed, National Guard units were unable to deploy, and PMC troops had been spotted reinforcing the defenses of several embassies.

All in all, the thirty-fourth anniversary of Patriot Day was a beautiful sight to behold from the White House Promenade, according to Lori Tomlinson. A day of mourning in its original incarnation, it had transformed into a day of hatred and selfishness as new wounds were sliced, scraped, and stabbed around to the inflamed scab. How wonderful it was to see the diseased slaves, peons, and sheep bleeding each other and paying DREBINS for the privilege!

Aw, who the fuck was she kidding? This was an ordinary day with too many assholes still living and no clearance to engage.

"… anyway, did you seriously mercy-kill your mom and forgive your dad, Alex?" Tomlinson finished. "And did you save that conspiracy theorist's life?"

_Same old Lori_, the Shepherds lamented to themselves. She hadn't changed a bit since high school; if she held grudges, she held them for life. Alex was a rare exception, having killed much of his hometown while she was on deployment, thus receiving her pardon.

It was probably for the best that she fell for the story at the time that Alex had joined the military; if she'd stayed in the Order, she would've been several magnitudes worse than Amnion. Tomlinson's parents had noticed her persistent, unforgiving nature early in life, a trait that made her ideal for induction into the ranks of the notorious Bogeymen. She proved too stubborn even for _that_, deciding to run away from home and follow in Alex's footsteps.

"We did," Alex bluntly stated. Tomlinson would never have shown mercy to his mother by killing her, nor would she have forgiven his father. Neither would she have spared a first aid kit to save the life of a downed sheriff's deputy; she normally hated LEOs. "What's this about, Lori?"

"Nothing much," Tomlinson admitted. The haft of her hammer lightly thumped against the floor as she transferred it to her left hand. "I've been wondering about which sect's behind the HOTS, that's all. Can't be the Glen's because you fucked them up, and they were the last of the old guard."

"What about the red hood group?" supplied Elle. The angel Valtiel was in charge of rebirth. Haloes of the Sun were among his tools, which supported her hypothesis. Adding further credence was that he reserved a special hatred for the Morrises for refusing to birth God and stabbing Her to death with a katana.

Her husband rejected the notion. "Can't be Valtiel's sect. The Red Devil was Walter Sullivan's first kill. Haven't heard of anyone trying to revive 'em. Think it's the Holy Woman?"

"Ugh," Tomlinson groaned. "I hope not. The Holy _Mother_ gang was bad enough. Holy Woman's raised God twice. The world's lucky the Incubus fell to a guy with a pipe the first time. Must've been one tough bastard to go up against a god and win."

She was speaking of an incident in the summer of 1983. A writer named Harry Mason and his adopted daughter had planned to vacation in Silent Hill when their red Jeep was involved in an astral projection-induced accident. Finding his child had disappeared, Mason went to hell and back to recover her. Mason both succeeded and failed; after he bludgeoned the local cult's goat-headed god to death, he received his reincarnated daughter back as a baby.

"He was," the First Lady confirmed, causing the three to turn around. None of them had heard her approach, even with their armors' sensors activated. "Dad used to tell me he was the strongest man in the world. I believed him …"

Harry Mason was long dead. In July, Cher had returned to Maine to mark thirty-five years without the man who'd raised her twice. As a grisly tribute to his belief of how crime would not disappear if guns were banned, she arranged for an unrepentantly anti-gun ATF agent to be killed by a knife on the fourth, an act that incidentally benefitted her enemies in the militias.

The man who'd performed the hit was renowned as one of the saviors of the patriot militias … and an arms dealer without sense. Drebin 2012, already popular with fighters for his discounted high-volume ammo sales, slit the agent's throat with a dull pen knife, earning further respect from anti-government forces and securing his place in their hearts and minds.

It would make things all the sweeter when he stabbed the militias in the back. The betrayal by an icon and the slow realization that they'd missed a conspiracy right under their noses would destroy their world, just as that bitch, Claudia, had learned. _When_ he would be ordered to terminate his operation was a different matter—

"I'm sorry, Cher," Tomlinson apologized, interrupting the First Lady's daydream. "Didn't mean to reopen old wounds."

"Don't be. It was a lifetime ago. I've moved on since then." A twist of Cher's helmet unlocked it from her armor. She lifted it from her head. "How do I look?"

The aging bottle-blonde with tired hazel eyes was gone. Before them stood a silver-haired, blue-eyed teenager's face instead of her own. A fake cut marred her freckled left cheek, and the hints of tattoos were visible below her black choker.

Tomlinson immediately recognized the disguise. "God of Thunder? Hardcore. You almost look like the guy who gives Esfahani and Zia nightmares."

"Raiden?" The three politicians asked in unison.

That was oddly … _expected_.

"I see you've heard of him," the ex-FROG dryly remarked. "Thank God—well, not _that_ God, but you know what I mean—the Order's always been fucking incompetent. Lure a cyborg ninja they call 'Jack the Ripper' to town and try to kill him and his family with some pansy-ass monsters—how the fuck could that possibly go wrong? Instead of getting three people to sacrifice, they got a cyborg who came to terms with his past. The woman became even better at her job, and their kid turned out okay. Funny how that works out."

"The Order has a reputation for fucking up," Alex agreed. "Out of everybody who's gone to the Otherworld, how many _didn't_ come out in better shape than before? Not counting mentally, I mean."

Elle piped in at that point. "There was that one guy who vanished back in '93."

"James Sunderland?" supplied Alex. "Mary was from the good side of my family—as in she wasn't a close relative. Asshole killed her because she was sick."

They knew the name well. Mary Shepherd-Sunderland was married to the son of the South Ashfield Heights' superintendent until she contracted a disease that left her bedridden and disfigured. Unable to put up with her mood swings, James smothered her to death and vanished from the world after killing a few more people.

"Back when I was working with Douglas," said Cher, "I heard of a cop who disappeared in Silent Hill, too."

"Which one?" asked Tomlinson. "I may have played a role in a few disappearances after the War Economy ended."

"This was around the time I was born," the First Lady clarified, "like, right before. As in she helped my father and got possessed."

The crowds outside continued to grow as the four Mainers continued their reminiscence of their hometowns. Legends would be written in lead and blood in a few hours.

* * *

The Apostles' depot and safe house barely deserved those descriptors: It was an inner city residence with an abundance of dust and little else. Whichever group had come before had helped itself to every last munition for the purpose of starting a gang war. Someone was kind enough to leave notes detailing what supplies to replenish and the Armistead crew's next moves.

"I'll tell you," Raiden said as he helped Sunny stuff a case of life recovery darts into an ammo locker, "I don't need to know who he is to tell he's an insider in the Morris administration through their detective agency. Never would've thought you used Cartland and Mason's intel."

"You have to admit they're good," Sunny replied. "They had their guys in the IDF tracking the spy from Otacon-Soul within minutes of his plane landing at Ben Gurion. Yuri never would've been able to splat him if it weren't for their help."

"Sure," agreed Raiden, "but it means your gang's linked to the Federal Government. You have to be sure you haven't been infiltrated."

Sunny shut the locker and moved on to the next. "I'm not particularly worried about the feds _infiltrating_ us. You realize a lot of the professors at Armistead U used to be ArmsTech people? The guy I used to work for, Van Nguyen? He used to be an executive over there shortly after retiring from the Marines. He knows the major players in this conflict."

"That's not very reassuring," Raiden pointed out. "So you have a former AT boss working for a DREBINS-run school. He can't save you if the FBI or CIA or whatever government agency comes after you."

"He's just one of our many connections," said Sunny. A can of 6.8 SPC appeared in her hands shortly before being shoved into the locker. "From AT, Nguyen knows the founders of DREBINS, including 893. I've met a lot of his Corps buddies as well, including Gunner Cruz, Lori Tomlinson, Eiji Morris—"

"You've met the President?" Raiden interrupted.

"Uh, yeah," admitted Sunny, "thought that was obvious. I know Old Ricky, don't I? He knows the First Lady, and she'd better know her own husband. Or I could cut out a few degrees of separation since Nguyen served with Morris in Romania. I can even admit I've met the President and his wife in person because they approached me to help get them elected."

"I can see where this is going," said Raiden. "They hired you to assassinate some political opponents and make it look like random gang violence." The cyborg ninja tried to calculate when it happened. "Had to be before the election … you would've been in grad school at the time or fresh out…." Nothing made sense until he discarded the idea that _she'd_ been the one to kill someone. "You're talking about Rabinowitz, aren't you?"

"Their company's intel on Rabinowitz—courtesy of Ricky—for our program on what to target. Rabinowitz worked on us both at Area 51; I figured you had a better claim on him. Fucking nativist doctor … if you hadn't carved him up, I would've gone up to New York and bombed him myself." She shut the locker and moved past the third, giving her attention to a gray toolbox instead. Software packages were gently lowered into the bottom of the container before a pile of flash drives concealed the illicit materials.

Raiden made a questioning grunt after he spotted the labels on the discs. "No wonder you're the industrial world's worst nightmare: You don't need to go through a convoluted scheme to steal and decrypt some company's plans when you can dupe them at will."

"What, this?" Sunny asked, pointing at the tool chest of memory. "Nah, this is Yuri's stuff—personal use. We don't call him 'Cipher' just because it makes him sound like a codebreaker or a Patriot boogeyman."

Secretly, Sunny was relieved at the turn this conversation had taken. If she could slowly walk Raiden from Old Ricky, she could make the former forget about the latter. Military cyborgs stored memories in their left hands, which was somewhat problematic if she wanted to protect Ricky's true identity. Revealing as much as she did was a huge risk, but if she could overload Raiden with information, she stood a slight chance of forcing him to sift through the chaff, thereby delaying the reveal until the right time.

"Dad! Sunny!" John called out as he ascended the stairs to the cache. "We got positive IDs on the targets. Eyes on and guns pointed at 'em, in case you're wondering!"

"Already?" Sunny asked. "They work fast."

"Yeah," John agreed. "I've secured us a van on the other side to get us to Georgetown. Our people are hard at work keeping them blocked in."

Raiden groaned. "Georgetown, as in the other side of the city. If you're planning to assassinate someone today, you're outta luck. Unless you plan on blasting your way through thousands of armed protesters, you won't make it. You'd have a better chance of flying halfway around the world in half an hour to stop a terrorist attack no one cares about." Then he understood how they were inserting into the location. "Right, you have teleportation technology. Who is this target, anyway?"

"An authoritarian pacifist," explained Sunny. "Counterintuitive as it may sound, they exist. This one in particular wants everything banned. A guy gets cornered by bullies, fights his way out, kills one, disappears into history. In comes this stupid-ass cunt who calls for the kid to be locked up for the rest of his life because, in her world, it's better to be tortured and murdered than to stoop to the bullies' level and fight back."

_Shit,_ John and Raiden both thought. They knew how easy it was to get Sunny into rant mode, and how the best option was to let her burn herself out. The woman could talk forever when she was in the wrong mood.

"She's consistent in her belief in nonviolence in general," she continued. "Consistency ain't always good. You got a gun? Shit, you even think of getting a _stick_? Oh no, violence can never be the way because it only breeds more violence! Go the fuck to prison, because 'people that seek to own a weapon obviously have dangerous insecurities that some rehab in prison would help overcome.' I don't give a fuck about how she considers incarcerating millions of people to be a peaceful solution because doing the mental gymnastics breaks my brain.

"It doesn't end there, either. She wants hate speech to be a felony—not an infraction or a misdemeanor, a _felony_. What's her definition of hate speech? Anything that disagrees with her distorted worldview, but oh no, she's not doing this for herself, she says; she's trying to censor us so some thin-skinned, weak little brats don't off themselves. If we want to be compassionate, we have to be just like the Europeans and speak only in lies and praise.

"But that's not all, not by a long shot. Our hospitals have had a shortage of blood and organs for decades. You have an obligation to donate your blood and organs, she says, and you'd fucking better do it on demand. If you don't, well, guess what? You're donating whether you like it or not. Whether you do it as a civilian or a resident of Club Fed is your choice.

"So maybe you think you can cheat the system by destroying your body. Nope. All meat and unhealthy foods are to be banned from human consumption. Live in a food desert? Starve. Hunt to supplement your meals? Fuck you, hunting is merely a fetish and you had no right to eat those 'nonhuman people' in the first place.

"If you come upon an angry mob demonstrating in favor of her causes, get out of your car and join it, no matter how much shit you have to get done or even if you don't know a thing about what's going on. 'Peaceful people power includes you,' and if you can't afford to be minorly inconvenienced, you deserve to be _majorly_ and _routinely harassed_, because polite reality hasn't done the job and you shouldn't have needed convincing.

"And what if you oppose her causes? Then she doesn't want you in prison. She wants you _dead_. You see, these nanny state demands of hers are all backed by good intentions, as if that's supposed to make them right. Oh sure, you'll be a slave, but you'll be more free to have a secure old age, to live longer, to rise above your station of birth, to believe in her 'enlightened' views. You'll also be free from a lot, too; you'll never again be chained by your own barbarism, nor will you be subjected to violence from your fellow citizens. 'Freedom from fear is worth any price,' especially when it preserves the peace."

_It's over?_ the men hoped._ Yeah, it's over._

"Right," said John, "thanks for that. To sum things up, we gotta head to Georgetown, RV with our crew, neutralize the target, make it look like a militia hit, and exfil."

"Why are we making this look like a militia did the job?" Raiden asked. He realized too late that he'd slipped up.

"I can see Mr. Washington was telling the truth," said Sunny. "You never pay attention to briefings, do you, Jack? Okay, this bitch has a lot of followers. Her views are the opposite of the militias that happen to be in town right now. The militias have spec ops wannabes in their ranks who could conceivably divert to Georgetown for a little assassination."

"False flag operation," John summarized. "The teleporter should be ready by now. You two go on ahead. I have to get stuff outta the trunk."

"All right," said his father, "but I'm holding you two to your promise. I'd better meet this Old Ricky of yours at the end of the day."

_Mission failed._

* * *

The Morrises had stepped out to confront the demonstrators without Secret Service protection or their armor. It was the most unwise decision they could take, especially when the mob was angry and armed.

It would also be the mother of all false flag attacks. The Morrises' mere presence would goad the most trigger-happy among their opposition to open fire, which would be rightfully seen as a concerted assassination attempt against the elected leaders of their country. Once the first shots were fired, others would join in, lost in the mob mentality. They would brag about having been there when the Morris regime was struck down, brag that they shot at the tyrants of their own free will. No one had pushed them to shoot the President and the First Lady; it was something all true Americans knew to be done.

That eagerness to claim that they had fired upon the Morrises would be their undoing. If they themselves believed that their act was of their own accord, calling the attack on the President a false flag was saying that the patriots were government stooges. Anyone who made that allegation would be marked as a traitor to the cause and be hunted down for an unforgivable insult.

The American public didn't care who started wars. Peace and stability were all that mattered to the masses; they were more than willing to support genocide as long as they didn't have to lift a finger or pay an extra cent in taxes. Their complacency would cost them when the Morris administration formally declared war on their own country. Scores of millions who had nothing to do with the rebellion would be marked for death for exactly that reason: They had done _against_ it and were thus complicit in treason.

Obviously, it was a power grab by Eiji Morris' masters and cronies. DREBINS stood to profit by selling arms to both sides, and when its clients defaulted on their debts, their property would be forfeit. The corporation's agents in Congress and the White House were scripted to sell off more control of the US in lieu of cash payments and point the Fourteenth Amendment's public debt clause when their constituents balked. Rebel groups would be wiped out after they served their purpose, as their suppliers owned the government they were fighting against, meaning their continued resistance was tantamount to backstabbing their allies.

The Morrises and Shepherds would be long gone by the time the dust settled in a few years. They'd be living in the lap of luxury somewhere in the Galugan Archipelago, enjoying their retirement from war and immunity from extradition. Barring an alien invasion, they'd be untouchable.

Cher Morris fought the urge to gun down the speaker who called for blasphemers and heretics against God to be criminalized. Fuck that. Dictators who committed genocide due to criticism, disrespect, and rejection were rightfully put down like the subhumans they were. God would get no free pass from her, only an HF blade to the skull.

Next to her, Eiji stood tall against the sea of so-called patriots. All it would take for him to end this insurrection was one word, the ultimate battle cry. He _wouldn't_ use it; as overwhelming as the odds were, the enemies he was facing at the moment would be useful cannon fodder once the fog rolled into the area.

His finger on a discreet button, the President privately entertained the prospect of uttering that command to the crowd before burning them down, the plan be damned. The chickenshit peoples of the rest of the world were conflict-averse to the point where they surrendered and enslaved themselves to extremists on sight. In America, if Earth would die without one man's sacrifice, then everyone else would just have to shut the fuck up and make whatever peace they could in their last moments.

The First Couple itched for a fight, but they refused to start one. Unlike their enemies, they still remembered the meanings of professionalism and restraint. Forced to allow their citizens to speak their minds, they passed the time secretly communicating with each other. Falling back on telepathy, the First Lady asked her husband, _Do they ever shut up?_

_Pray they don't,_ answered the President. A veteran of several protests and suppression thereof, he'd learned to read the mobs without scanning their minds. _When they do, they start shooting._ From the south and east, he detected a familiar fog approaching. _Oh hey, the Otherworld's showed up._

_Then let's get Civil War Two started already,_ the First Lady remarked. She reached out with her mind, stopping time for herself and her husband. A scan of the front row found many protesters violating gun safety rules by keeping their fingers on the triggers. It was then a simple matter of giving each digit a soft telekinetic push.

_Activating Clear Skies_, Eiji announced. _Armor up and resume normal time flow._

Time sped up, nearly deafening the crowd as dozens of guns fired in unison. After the initial shock wore off, their enemies realized they'd opened fire on the First Couple too early, ruining the original plan of assassinating them after they'd refused the ultimatum. As rational thought returned, they noticed that their compatriots had also discharged their weapons, but none of them appeared shocked behind their masks and shades. Had everyone else planned to shoot the Morrises early and left them out of the loop? Were they deemed not trustworthy enough? And how had their own weapons fired?

It didn't matter. Anyone who admitted his or her contribution to the shootings was the result of negligence—there was no such thing as an accidental discharge—would lose a lot of prestige. A tyrant and his wife lay dead because the people had gotten sick of their bullshit and executed them in the grandest firing squad in history, not because someone's finger slipped.

Then they realized the Morrises still stood before them, unscathed by the barrage. The First Couple had donned power armor and were brandishing high frequency weapons on par with the best DREBINS had to offer.

"Guess it's time to roll the credits," mocked the First Lady. She took a combat stance and readied herself to charge into the militia's lines—

"Opening or ending?" her husband suddenly asked, killing the mood.

* * *

The Shepherds and Tomlinson tracked the flailing body of a militant as it arced over the White House. Whether the screaming voice belonged to a man or a woman was unknown, but it was definitely high-pitched and scared shitless as it cleared Lafayette Square.

"That's our cue," Tomlinson pointed out, her words punctuated by a splat and screech of brakes from H Street. "What say you?"

"All right," decided Elle. "Your people are cleared to engage, Lori. See you on the ground!"

The Shepherds launched themselves into the air, their jetpacks coming to life once they were clear of the structure. As the pair of politicians screamed into battle to cover their allies' retreat, Tomlinson reminded herself that just because they were all getting older didn't mean they couldn't still fight. She'd made that assumption quite often in her earlier years, with almost fatal consequences for herself nearly every time.

_Fucking Desperado. You should've sold to us, you pieces of shit, but no, the Alabaman war criminal, Cambodian mobster, and French-Algerian butcher wanted nothing to do with Maria. She showed you why Shay used to call her _Bloody_ Mary—and in Maryland, to boot. She could've taken you all on at once even without that swordsman helping her out._

_And fuck you too, _senhor_ Rodrigues. You and Maria might like that robo-dog with the chainsaw, but I grew up in a place where giant skinless mutts who just don't quit are the least of your problems. Adopt him at your own risk, but don't ever make me shake with him._

Shaking her head clear of those curses, the old FROG dialed her Codec to her field commanders' private frequency. "All leaders, Tomlinson. Your forces have been given clearance to engage at your discretion. Before you do anything stupid, keep in mind that you are outnumbered and outgunned. Also remember that while prisoners cost money; the dead cost nothing. Let none escape your judgment. Out."

* * *

An endless tide of patriots attempting to storm the Morris' position could only end one way: With every last aggressor dead and the politicians still standing. With command and control degrading due to some kind of electromagnetic interference, the only option for the horde was to run and die. Whose bullets ended their lives remained their choice.

The commander of a unit of barrier troops declared anyone who fell back across Constitution Avenue a valid target. This was Patriot Day and God help him, no American would betray the Founders by retreating. If the sight of the Washington Monument didn't encourage them to turn around and keep fighting, they had never been loyal to the cause and deserved to die with the image of the obelisk burned into their minds.

His entire command ended up vaporized before he could unload a full belt from his M2. If he was so patriotic, why hadn't he been fighting at the front like the rest of them? Patriotism didn't mean shit to the dead, and he wanted an America where his will, not the individual's, reigned supreme. Fuck this fake little coward, this wannabe commissar.

A company of militia tried to call their prepositioned artillery to shell the residents of DC. No one acknowledged the order because none of the teams were still living. Trying again and again to raise the dead, their captain never realized that attempting to bomb innocent civilians crossed a moral line with the allied unit sheltering his men. The company heard the full story of what had transpired when they met their brethren in the afterlife.

Survivors from a camp near Armistead wanted to bring in their massive truck bomb as a last resort. Upon learning that the group had acquired high-grade C4 Sunday night under suspicious circumstances, piquing the interest of a platoon of demolitions specialists who'd scattered in the same direction. Why should a bunch of amateurs be trusted with such a prize? The two units opened fire on each other for control over more explosives than they'd ever used in their lifetimes.

Neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates engaged each other, the former sickened by the latter's Protestants-only extremism and the latter by the anti-American values of the former, including the extermination of sources of viable slave labor and the advocation for an overpowering central government. Ethnic supremacist groups plunged into the fray, targeting both groups and other minorities.

Libertarians fought authoritarians, sovereign citizens fought statists, religious fundamentalists fought secularists—everyone fought everyone else. Up and down the line, the patriots of America, once united by a common enemy in the government, fell apart to infighting and long-simmering vendettas at the worst possible time. When the fog finally cleared, the hated regime would be stronger than ever, and it was all thanks to them.

Eiji Morris sat behind the trigger of his minigun, lazily drinking an iced tea through a straw and waiting to engage the next target. Elegant as this display was, it seemed far too much effort for what it effected. He would have simply ordered the crowd to surrender and been done with it in under fifteen seconds. The whole city would have obeyed; the area of the ultimate battle cry was effectively unlimited as long as enough willpower was used.

Still, his wife had done more damage to their enemies than he ever could. "That's ma Cher!" he complimented, raising his drink in salute.

"We're not outta the woods yet," the First Lady reminded the other three present. "See the pattern all the blood and guts made on the Ellipse? We got a giant HOTS right in front of us. They're here."

* * *

**A/N:**

**The working title for this chapter was "The Unbroken Blades," which turned into "Fog of War" to reference the unnatural fog descending on DC. I decided that was too unoriginal and unfitting, which led to "Poison Fog." As a nod to President Morris and the censored scene where he recounted the castle raid of 1999, the title then became "Poison Mind," as in the _Castlevania_ song. The finalized title was intended to reflect the spirit of its predecessors: Refusing to quit, inability to tell apart true allies from enemies when the chips are down, the incoming Silent Hill monsters, Eiji Morris' bitterness, and the Morrises' mind control.**

**Compared to his portrayal in _Revengeance_, Raiden is OOC. He'd _better_ be; in this universe, he didn't have the luxury of Sam and Monsoon helping him come to terms with himself. Instead, he went through Silent Hill, and if you've played any of the games, you'd know that blindly hacking and slashing your way through the monsters will only get you killed... or worse. Why does he ask so many questions? Because he knows what horrors await him if he misses one little fact and because to real-life special forces operators, good intel can mean the difference between life and death. There's also the tendency for player characters to talk to everyone, and Raiden _was_ the protagonist for two games.  
**

**To explain why Sunny's last name in this fic is Gurlukovich instead of the canon Emmerich, this universe had the Patriots' lackeys try to execute Snake and Otacon, which was a nod to _MGS4_'s scrapped ending. The attempt to kill the only family a six- or seven-year-old girl knew unhinged her a bit. Otacon's inability or refusal to take revenge caused Sunny to lose a bit of respect for him, causing her to refuse to be his adopted daughter or take his last name.**

**Sunny's description of their target is something I wish I'd made up. Notice those single quote marks that pop up every so often in her rant? _Those are direct quotes from real people_. Obviously, I don't own the copyright to them.  
**

**DREBINS' owning of nearly everything on the planet is the result of their infinite ammo technology. ****Their leaders aren't idiots and know how to exploit a competitive advantage. They use their income to expand their business, and since the duty of a business is to maximize shareholder value, they have no choice but to keep growing. By the time of this fic, they've absorbed many of the _Metal Gear_ universe's companies, including the Big Five PMCs, ArmsTech, General Water, Omni Corporation, Junker Expensive of America, etc. As Tomlinson alluded, the companies being targeted for hostile takeover sometimes had no choice; you either sold or you died.  
**

******Desperado and World Marshal existed in this universe, but had a less significant impact on the world. In this universe, Mistral, Monsoon, and Sundowner died ingloriously at a FROG sniper's hands. For reasons to be revealed in a later chapter, Steven Armstrong went pro instead of joining the Navy, which cost him his political career and unfortunately saved his life. Armstrong never got the chance to injure Sam, which meant the latter never gave up his will and ********instead** helped take over those companies.


End file.
